


Somebody Help, This Timer Is Broken

by LazyWriterGirl



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buckle Up Darlings, But I Cannot With Canon Right Now, F/F, I Apologize in Advance But I Will Be Dragging Us All Through The Emotional Hills, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Seriously Though We Are In For a Ride, Slow Burn, Soulmates AU, There Will Still Be Elements of Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2018-09-19 15:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9446879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyWriterGirl/pseuds/LazyWriterGirl
Summary: Kara Danvers. Lena Luthor. Sara Lance. Three women who, by rights, should never have met, and yet...the Timers on their wrists tell a rather different story. Lena is the only one with in-depth knowledge of what the Timers mean, and she has questions. Mainly, will they all be able to find each other even though Kara's an alien, and Sara'snot even on the right Earth?Probably.But how long will it take?





	1. Lena: Ages 10 to 18

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Supergirl or DC'S Legends of Tomorrow, nor any of the characters associated with either; and no profit is made through this fic. I'll be taking liberties with much of the canon presented in both shows, while leaving certain bits and pieces intact. All errors both linguistic and otherwise are mine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena thinks she might be defective...

On the morning of her tenth birthday it’s her brother who opens her door and sits at the side of her bed, brushing stray hair off her face as she stirs. It’s the itching feeling wrapping around her right wrist that eventually gets her to wake up, testing the light of the room with the slow open-and-close of her eyes. Lex’s unruly curls flop about his face, but he’s smiling at her and that’s good.

When she opens her eyes permanently Lex is still smiling, and after giving her a few more moments of silence he’s laughing and telling her to roll up her sleeve. As if catching himself, he holds up a hand, then asks her if she wants to be alone, but she’s ten and her big brother Lex is her hero, so of course she wants him there when she sees, for the first time, the countdown to the start of the rest of her life. She rolls up her sleeve, hoping that the number is small; not _months_ away—that’s far too immediate—but maybe only a few years? That would be nice.

 

When she looks down, she finds that the Timer’s figures are written in blue and red, and honestly it…doesn’t look at all like anything _human_.

 

Lena knows that her eyes go wide the way they usually do when she’s on the verge of panicking, because Lex is looking at her and saying, in a voice that is almost too low to hear, “Calm down, Lena, everything is okay.”

“But…but…what does this _mean_ , Lex?”                        

He frowns at her wrist, muttering to himself that this must be some mistake—not _his_ sister, this can’t be happening to _her—_ but his eyes, as he looks at her, are still fond, still soft and familiarly Lex. She watches him carefully, hoping that he’ll tell her what this all means. Her brother, however, only continues to mumble and scratch at the covered skin of his own wrist.

 

Come to think of it, she’s not sure that she’s ever seen Lex’s Timer up close.

 

Looking down at the flashing glyphs on her arm soon knocks the curiosity right out of her. Lena allows herself to relax a bit even though she feels like she’s drowning—like how it had been before the Luthors came into her life; before they took her away from a leaking orphanage in the middle of the countryside of a country far, far away from here. Before they gave her a name and told her to be proud of it. Before Lex showed her that there was somebody out there who _could_ love an orphan like herself.

“Lena,” Lex says, and his hands grip her at the wrist, covering the strange markings that seem to be counting down, even though she cannot understand them. “Lena, don’t show this to Mom or Dad, okay? I’ll come up with something to help you hide it but just…just _don’t._ ”

“I don’t understand…what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing, Lena, I promise.”

“Then why does—

“Lena, please.”

She’s about to press him again when she feels the same itching sensation from only moments ago, though this time it’s wrapping around the skin of her left wrist. Lena is afraid—she’s never heard of _this_ happening before—but before she can hide her emotions from Lex he’s whispering at her fiercely, quickly, “What’s _wrong_?” With a shaking hand, she removes her right wrist from Lex’s grip, then rolls up her left sleeve.

The numbers appear in a striking combination of black and white, bold and clear against her skin.

“Two Timers?”

Lex is keeping an eye on her, she knows, watching to see if she will cry or scream. Watching for any sort of reaction that she might have to this news. Personally, she isn’t sure what to feel, but at least the numbers are familiar. And indicative of a point in time that is almost _imminent_. According to the black-and-white numbers on her left wrist and the tiny subscripted M just underneath, her soulmate (or at least one of her soul mates) is only a few months away from her. She only has to wait until the end of the year, it seems, and then she’ll be with her soulmate.

Or at least, one of them.

Unless she’s defective and this is all just some sick cosmic joke, which she sincerely hopes it isn’t.

“Lena,” Lex starts, and his voice is still a whisper, lingering like the fondness in his eyes as he takes her left hand in both of his, “When we go downstairs, make sure that Mom and Dad only see _this_ Timer. Keep the one on your right wrist hidden _at all times_ , do you understand me?”

She nods, not really understanding what the big deal is but knowing, somehow, that this is a _big deal_. Lena doesn’t think it should be too difficult, and besides, it’s something that Lex has asked her to do.

 

For her big brother, Lena’s sure she would do almost anything.

 

He leaves her room shortly after she promises, in words, to cover up the strange Timer, and Lena gets right to work on getting dressed in her best clothes. A person’s tenth birthday is often considered an important occasion, and Mom will be furious if she doesn’t look absolutely perfect. No doubt it’s more for _her_ sake than for Lena’s, but by now Lena knows much better than to argue. Mom is fine most of the time, but _definitely_ not when Lena argues.

Before she heads downstairs Lena takes great care to apply concealer—an early gift from Mom which Lena, only ten, is expected to _use_ —to the blue-and-red Timer on her right wrist, taking a little extra time to stroke her fingers down and across the strange symbols before she covers them up. Wherever the glyphs are from, they’re rather pretty, in an abstract way. It’s almost a shame that they have to disappear for now, but Lena does as Lex had told her before turning her attention to her left wrist, with its familiar, _normal_ numbers and its bold black-and-white colour scheme.

Upon inspecting this second Timer more closely, she is surprised to see a small number one superscripted over the last digit in the six-digit combination. 04M/00/001. It doesn’t strike her as particularly odd, but nobody _else_ ever mentioned having a little superscripted number over their Timer, so…

Lena covers up the tiny number one as well, making sure that no amount of accidental smudging will ruin her handiwork before she makes her way to the table for breakfast.

 

It isn’t until later that night, after all the well-wishes and practiced praise have been accepted, and after her mother has paraded her about a noisy banquet hall far too many times to count, that Lena looks down at the black-and-white Timer and realizes that it hasn’t moved at all.

As in, not a single second has passed if the numbers on her wrist are to be believed.

For some reason, she doesn’t call Lex. In all honesty, she wants to; she wants to call him and have his adult wisdom to draw on, wants to be able to ask her big brother when everything will be better again. But she doesn’t.

Lena may not have been born a Luthor, but if she’s to prove that she too can be an exemplar of the Luthor steel then she has to start somewhere; has to start facing down her problems for herself. Besides, she figures that this whole business of Timers isn’t at all what it’s cracked up to be, and it certainly isn’t a good enough reason to stress out her older brother.

 

 

 

Lex seems to have enough to worry about as it is.

No need to bother him with the fact that his kid sister is, in all likelihood, defective.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Over the next few years, Lena’s Timers both act strangely.

 

When she’s twelve, it begins to bother her.

 

The odd, decidedly _non-human_ symbols on her right wrist move along steadily for a while, until they suddenly freeze in a pattern that she (obviously) does not recognize. The brilliance of the blue and red fades until it is so dull that, even had she been able to read the glyphs, would have rendered her Timer completely illegible.

It’s _strange_.

Lena is slightly worried, but she knows the stories; the only thing she really needs to worry about is either of her Timers vanishing. That would mean that the person tied to that Timer…Lena doesn’t want to think about that. She’s only twelve, after all.

The strange glyphs stay frozen for days, then weeks, then months.

 

Then years.

 

She’s thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

Sixteen.

Seventeen.

 

Still frozen.

 

And yet, through it all, Lena reminds herself to stay calm—or as relatively calm as she can while all her friends and acquaintances at boarding school and at home are meeting their soul mates, or moving ahead in their lives. Even Veronica “ _Call-me-Roulette_ ” Sinclair seems to be getting somewhere, that god-awful bitch. Everybody is growing up except for Lena.

 

She stares at her Timers every single night, hoping for one of them to just suddenly _make sense_.

 

Neither of them ever does.

 

It isn’t that she’s afraid, because truthfully, she can’t say that she is. There’s no reason to be afraid unless her soul mates are both careless, possibly reckless morons who manage to get themselves killed before they meet...which, realistically, they probably might be—because if opposites are supposed to attract, the odds are that at least _one_ of them will be a daredevil of some sort.

Oh, wow.

As Lena throws a few things into her suitcase—last-minute things, really, nothing essential—she gulps down just a bit of fear.

If it were only the strange, _alien_ Timer doing weird things, she’d feel better about the whole “my-soul-mates-are-most-likely-thrill-seekers-who-will-prematurely-die” thing. Unfortunately, however, it seems that whoever or whatever decided Timers and soul mates were to be a thing also decided that Lena was to have a rough go of it, with two soul mates to find—both of whose Timers are the most _cryptic_ things in the world.

Both of them.

Smart as she is, Lena has no clue what to make of the Timer that she can actually read, something that further fuels the idea that she’s probably going to be the most sane, self-preservative, _normal_ member of this little triad. It’s confusing. Some days she wakes up and the number is counting down steadily, signalling that she’s only minutes away from her soulmate. The Timer, however, never hits the 00/00/00 combination that she’s starting to wish for even though she’s got a lot more to do with her life before she settles down. Instead, it seems to reset itself, and become frozen in a loop of one more minute, one more minute, _just one more goddamn minute._

 

Lena, now heavily interested in the sciences, might have an explanation for it—maybe—but she really doesn’t want to think about that because if she’s right…

 

“Come on then, Lena! You wouldn’t want to be late for the start of your last year, would you?”

Lena latches up her suitcase and pulls it off her bed. She really couldn’t-fucking-care less about her last year of boarding school, to be honest. The familiar itching sensation running around both of her wrists reminds her that she has more important things to worry about.

Two very much-more-important _people_ to worry about.

The thought that somewhere out there are two people _born_ to love her has gotten her through so much—so much self-hatred, self-doubt, so much awful bullshit, to be honest—but she’s starting to wonder if half the reason why her Timers are acting so stupid is because somehow, she’s just not worth it.

 

At the sight of the displeased curl of Lillian Luthor’s lip as Lena makes her way down the stairs, struggling with her stupid suitcase, Lena hopes desperately that she’s wrong, and that the loves of her life will be along shortly to save her from living this way. Mom has never been _easy_ on her, but now that she is almost an adult, things have been so very, very trying; and while yes, Lena rises to the challenge each time, she can only carry on for so long before the task becomes too great. After all, unlike the soulmate to whom the blue-and-red Timer is tied, Lena is only human.

She doesn’t know how much longer she can continue living this way.

What the hell is wrong with her?

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

On her eighteenth birthday, after the obligatory phone conversation with Mom and the better, almost genuinely happy one with Dad (not to mention the sweet-as-ever, though slightly distracted one with Lex), Lena finds herself in the library. It’s late in the evening, and she’s the only one in this section, but Lena doesn’t mind a bit of solitude after a day of near constant talking.

She has an assignment for astronomy—not that she really wanted to learn about the stars, but Lex had insisted and she couldn’t refuse such a simple request from her brother if she tried—and she’s looking for a book that doesn’t still reference the ninth planet in the solar system. For a school as seemingly _elite_ as this one, there are quite a few outdated texts that have yet to be weeded out by the “extremely knowledgeable library staff”. Honestly Lena doesn’t mind, not really, but it does make tedious assignments feel even more tedious. She sighs as she reads about the ninth planet, Pluto, for the _nth_ time, putting the book in her hand back in its place.

Then it happens.

One minute, she’s reaching for something on a higher shelf, and then her right wrist is positively _burning_ with how much it itches. Startled, she ceases in her quest for the probably-not-helpful-anyway book and flicks at the button at her right wrist cuff so hard that it flies off, skittering across the carpeted floor with a barely-present scratching hiss. She disregards it—buttons are easy enough to replace. Sliding the sleeve up until it bunches at her elbow, Lena rolls her wrist over and gasps so loudly that she is certain that, had it not been night, she would have drawn the attention of far too many of her fellow students.

The glyphs on her right wrist have changed, and in place of the alien symbols Lena can now see _numbers_ , the kind of numbers that have graced her left wrist for the last six years. Human numbers. Lena knows, instinctively, what this means, and before she reads her Timer—for the first time, technically—she cannot help but release a lowly murmured “Finally.”

 Her alien soulmate seems to have found their way to Earth.

And on her _birthday_ , no less.

When she reads the numbers that have begun to tick down steadily on her right wrist, her smile does not fade even though what she sees is: 12Y/03M/10D. Twelve years, three months, and ten days. It will be spring, she’ll be thirty, and Lena has no idea what she’ll be like in twelve years but she’s too excited to care. It won’t be a short wait, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Lena feels that it will be worth it. She’s only twelve years and a few months away from her soulmate.

Or at least, _one_ of her soul mates.

 

Granted, she doesn’t think much about the Timer on her left wrist for a few days after her birthday; she’s just that happy about the alien one changing. Even when she checks the black-and-white Timer in the morning (to log it’s reading in the journal she’s kept since she was thirteen) and at night (to do the same thing, because sometimes the number changes and it is _ridiculous_ ), she doesn’t feel all that impatient or confused.

Because there’s confirmation now.

Confirmation that Lena Luthor—who can’t remember the name she’d had before this one—is _not_ defective, the way she’s thought herself to be for the last eight years. She’s _not_ some colossal mistake with nobody in the universe to actually love and care for her.

 

Casting her gaze back down to the black-and-white Timer on her left wrist, she sighs. Now, if only she could figure out—for _certain_ —why this Timer jumps about so much—one month, two years, three days, one minute; it’s all rather confusing.

 

Lena has long since figured out that the nature of their Timers is not as…cut-and-dry as most people believe them to be, but even then, the movement of _hers_ is strange. The number, as her studies have proven, is not quite a countdown towards the moment of meeting one’s soulmate. It’s more of a signifier of how far apart in time soul mates are from one another; a tricky little particularity, but one that might explain why Lena’s black-and-white Timer has acted so strangely. At least, that, coupled with the theory she’s been toying with for a few years now.

She puts down her pen after recording the Timer’s most recent log, and sighs, thinking about her theory. It’s fairly remarkable, honestly, and she’s not sure if she’s right but she has _ideas._ Good ones. Good ones that she, at least in part, owes to Lex—or at least, to the afternoons she’s spent with him stalking about the Luthor estate in a joint effort to avoid their parents.

In recent years, her brother has become somewhat obsessed with the multiverse theory—among other things—and, with her position as favourite (and only) younger sister in place, she’s been around to help him with his research. The multiverse, as it turns out, _exists_ , it’s _real_ , and Lena knows that she should be even more amazed about it, but she’s always had her suspicions. After all, the little number 1 superscripted above her black-and-white Timer may not be a commonality, but examples of it have existed (a fact of which Lena has only recently become aware thanks to nights of extensive research).

As far as she can ascertain, three-way bonds such as the one she will inevitably fall into are rare, but not unheard of either. The reasons for such things happening are as of yet indeterminable, and Lena highly doubts that there will ever be enough people willing to come forward to talk about their atypical bonds. After all, it’s a strange thing to have to come to terms with for one’s self—knowing that it takes not one, but _two_ people to be complete.

When she brings up the thought with Lex during a phone call a couple days later, she can _hear_ the shrug in his voice when he says, “Perhaps it just means that you deserve a little more love, Lena.” She has to shrug too, even though he can’t see her.

 

Perhaps he’s right, perhaps she’s been looking at this wrong.

 

Of course, that’s all just a theory, and a far-reaching, rather _improbable_ one at that, but for now, it’s the only thing that she has to go off of that doesn’t leave her feeling absolutely insane. It would explain the strange time jumps, certainly, and it would explain why the Timer sometimes even counts _negatively_ , but really, it’s mostly just…almost too wild to imagine. It’s _dizzying_ to think that there are multiple universes, and that a person destined to be part of her life could have been born into a different one than herself.

 

 

That, and the fact that should her theory prove correct, she’ll need to develop advanced enough tech to _find_ this person, occupies her every free thought for the next decade and then some. Well, every free thought that doesn’t go to the soulmate she has in _this_ universe, of course, because that’s a thing.

 

 

Wow.

Her life—as Lena comes to realize one evening as she’s fiddling with a new project of-which-her-mother-would-most-certainly- _not_ -approve—can only get _stranger_ from here.

She finds that she honestly doesn’t mind that in the least.


	2. Kara: Ages 10 to 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kara learns many lessons...

For the first nine years of her life she is no different from any other child born into the House of El—no different than any other child born on Krypton. On the morning of her first decade alive, however, Kara Zor-El awakens to the most _curious_ sensation running across both of her wrists. She startles awake, more annoyed than anything else, and what she finds is so surprising that she can’t help but let out a small yelp.

There are _symbols_ on her wrists, very prominent ones. As if she’d written them on her skin, although Kara has done nothing of the sort.

Within moments her parents are at her side, and Kara is further surprised when her father and mother do not immediately explain what has happened to her. Her father says that she’s fine, that she should get dressed for the day, and after kissing her forehead, he leaves. Her mother stays to help her dress, and tells her that the markings are a symbol of her great heart, though she appears rather worried when she says it.

As if something is wrong.

Kara wonders why that is, and it is a feeling that persists as the days drag on and the symbols on her wrists seem to change. She asks questions, but nobody answers them; not even Aunt Astra, who normally would speak where Kara’s parents are silent. Eventually, though she does not stop asking, she stops expecting an actual response. Kara knows her parents must have a reason for keeping things from her, but she can’t help but wonder what’s going on.

 

It feels like all that she does is _wonder_ , most days.

 

Eventually her parents come around, perhaps inspired by her endless pursuit of knowledge concerning the markings. They ask her about how her skin feels, or if she’s noticed anything different about the lines and curves and swirls marked out across her wrists. Kara is always truthful, and she tells them about every itch, every twinge, every change.

Sometimes, after meals, her father will pull her aside and ask to see her wrists. She always obliges. He always stares at the symbols for a little longer than she thinks is necessary, but she can’t really blame him. They’re constantly changing, which honestly was startling at first but has by now become just another part of Kara’s life. Just as much a part of her day-to-day experiences as waking up, going out, studying, and spending more time than not gazing out at the reddened sky.

One evening her father tells her that they are human numbers, and teaches her how to read them. It’s a very simple thing, really. Soon, Kara has mastered the idea behind the numbers—which honestly are so straightforward that she wonders how _humans_ might get confused by them—and she takes to watching her wrists in times of boredom.

The numbers are strange and seem almost completely identical from one wrist to the other—matching even as they count down towards what Kara assumes will be a combination of the human symbol for zero—though upon closer inspection Kara realizes that that simply isn’t so. On her right wrist, the numbers are slightly larger, blockish almost. There’s also two smaller numbers on top—superscripted above the rest—a zero and a one. All the numbers are drawn out in a bold black-and-white design that she finds rather nice to look at. On her left wrist, the numbers are smaller and more precise, and those are styled in a gentle green colour that reminds her of something that she has never seen.

Like with the black-and-white numbers, she finds that these, too, are very nice to look at.

Kara feels something strange when she looks at the numbers written in black and white and gentle green—a sort of pulling sensation that is always accompanied by the faint itching of her wrists. She knows that as a daughter of the House of El, she will one day carry great responsibility on her shoulders, but for now…For now, all that she wants to do is find out what these human numbers mean. They’re _important,_ somehow, she knows that they are.

 

It’s decidedly odd; she’s never felt this strongly about…well, _anything_ before.

 

Kara asks her father about the numbers often, and one year after they first appear he tells her that it means that she is to be Bonded to the two whose wrists match hers. That, to her, can’t be right, because she’d received them at the age of ten, and that’s surely too young to know anything about one’s future partner—or partners, as her case may be—in life.

That’s certainly now how things are done on Krypton.

Kara asks her father why she’s not meant for one of their own kind, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say any more that day, but she gleans bits and pieces from him as the days turn into weeks. Timers, they’re called, though she could have guessed something so obvious for herself. She continues to ask, picks up as much as she can learn, as much as he is willing to give.

What she finds is interesting, to say the least—and, if she’s being honest, _exciting_ in a way that she would have never thought prior to this whole business of Timers.

Humans—not all humans, but most of them—spend their entire _lives_ searching for their match, in some cases. Because the numbers on their wrists are supposed to lead them to the person—or in cases like hers, the _people,_ as she must remind herself—for whom they were meant, in the grand scheme of the universe. Or at least, that’s the story that Kara manages to make out of the scientific explanations from her father, and the slightly more humouring stories from Aunt Astra.

Kara doesn’t really know when or if she’ll ever make it to Earth, but that’s something that she’ll have plenty of time to think about. She reads up on humanity from what little literature her father has managed to find for her, and she dreams. Will her partners be like her parents? Intelligent and firm, but loving in their own ways? Will they be like Aunt Astra and Uncle Non? Slightly more imperious but more than willing to have fun? Will they be like her uncle Jor-El and his wife Lara, who love each other so much and so openly that others say they barely seem Kryptonian?

Kara spends whole evenings losing herself in dreams of what her partners might be like, and what they will be like as a triad, a partnership. She wonders if they will accept that she is an alien to their world, or if they will need to work together to overcome whatever hurdle that might present. She wonders what they will look like—about their eyes and their hair and their smiles—and she hopes that they will like her appearance (though of course she _also_ hopes that they will all get along). Every evening she comes up with new faces, new backgrounds, new stories. She can’t wait for the day when she’ll meet her soul mates, when she’ll be able to spend these same hours learning all she can about them—the real people they are, and not just the dreams that pop into her head.

 

 

 

Three years after the Timers appear on her wrists, Kara is put into an Earthbound pod as Krypton dies; and the evenings of dreaming of humans she has yet to meet are long, long gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kara Zor-El knows that she is not where she was meant to be, and though she worries for the baby Kal-El who has no one to guard him, she cannot help but be more worried for herself. She is only a girl of thirteen; a capable girl, a strong, smart girl, but a girl of thirteen nonetheless; alone and not where she should be. She has no means of controlling the pod that now serves as the only thing between her and the certain death that awaits her in the Phantom Zone.

 

She has heard the stories, like all Kryptonian children; this is one of the worst places she could be.

 

Her body, seeming to recognize her plight, begins to slow down, begins to slowly, slowly coax her brain into quieting. She does not realize what is happening, but she falls asleep longer than she ever had on Krypton. When she wakes, always alone and afraid in this dark empty _hole_ of a place, she rubs the skin of her wrists—but so slowly—and prays to Rao that the people to whom her soul has been bound are not being negatively affected by her current situation.

She is not entirely sure how the Bonding customs of Earth work—her father had never had the chance to explain it to her in full—but she knows that there are two people out there, waiting for her, and she hopes against everything that there is still a chance that they will all find each other. Kara may be young, may not yet be interested in finding love the way that the humans seem to _need_ to find it, but that does not mean that she would have the dreams of _two_ people destroyed, if she could help it. She _will_ survive. She _will_ find a way out of this place.

 

She _will_ find the two whose souls are bound to her own.

 

Her eyes barely open anymore, but when they do, she makes sure to gaze upon the Timers, hoping that the day will never come when one of them disappears. On her left wrist, the gentle green of the Timer’s numbers remains constant, reassuring in a way she could not explain if she tried. By contrast, the black-and-white numbers on her right wrist (mostly the white, as the black is hidden in the darkness) seem to wink back at her, doing what they can to reassure her as well, it seems.

The Phantom Zone’s dreary shades cannot take that away from her: her optimism, her determination; her future. She clings to those things, those thoughts, as she drifts in and out of sleep, clings to them though the Timers on her wrist remain frozen, nearly illegible in the darkness. She clings to them as sleep takes over her for good; as her body shuts down to protect her from the cruel immobility of the Phantom Zone.

 

 

Stuck unconscious in the Phantom Zone Kara does not know it, but in the world outside this timeless place that defies every law of the universe she had ever learned, in the world where Kal-El has safely found his way to Earth, time is passing.

Time is passing and changing

Kal El becomes Clark Kent, and does not remember the world from which he has come. He believes himself to be human, and nobody corrects him because it is easier that way. Safer that way.

 

He goes to school.

He meets Lex Luthor.

He becomes Lex’s best friend.

 

He discovers his powers, his heritage.

 

He becomes Superman.

 

He saves Metropolis.

He saves the world.

 

 

She won’t find all this out until much, much later, but it happens.

 

 

 

It takes twenty-four years on Earth before Kara’s pod is somehow set free of the Phantom Zone, and then she is awake and afraid. The sky of this place is bright, so _bright_ and even through the top of her pod she cannot say that the light does not bother her eyes. Her body, unused to _feeling_ , is jarred horribly when her pod crashes on Earth—or what she hopes is Earth, at any rate—but surprisingly, Kara feels no pain.

If anything, she feels _strong_. Scared, yes, but strong. Strong even when Superman/Clark Kent/ _Kal-El_ opens her pod and looks down at her and all she recognizes are his eyes, at first. She sees it later, the prominent features of the House of El, but he isn’t her Kal, isn’t the baby she was sent to protect, and she’s _saddened_. Greatly so.

 

He doesn’t remember her, and she can’t blame him, but it still stings.

 

Kal— _Clark_ leaves her with the Danvers family, where she is immediately taken under Eliza and Jeremiah’s wings, and where she is the little sister—the one to be protected. No longer the protector she was meant to be. That’s Alex’s job, as her new big sister, and Kara, who has never had this before—never had a sister, bigger or smaller—does not know what to expect. As the days pass she stays quiet, mostly, makes a ton of mistakes, tries to learn. Tries to blend in even though being human is so, _so_ difficult that she almost can’t stand it.

Within the first few days the Danvers have given her their name and their home and the promising start of a family, but Kara thinks that things are just all a little _too_ much. All the rituals, all the rules, all the social graces—they are so very, very different from the ones she’d known back home. Some are pointless, some are interesting, some are just downright _confusing_ , but Kara tries her best even though it seems like she’s never going to be happy here. How could she ever be happy, _here_ , when her heart belongs on Krypton?

 

Sometimes though, she feels a faint itch across her wrists, and she is reminded that her heart…might one day feel at home here.

 

Being on Earth, Kara would have thought that she’d finally get some answers as to the nature of her Timers, but _Rao_ is it difficult to even bring them up in conversation! Jeremiah and Eliza are too busy making sure that she’s okay, that she’s not liable to get injured or anything—that she’s as indestructible as Superman—and though Eliza shows her how to use the shower and the tub on her first night, the older woman leaves Kara to her privacy. She makes sure that Kara understands her instructions, smiling, then exits the room before Kara has even lifted one of Alex’s borrowed sweaters from her head.

Kara tries to talk to Jeremiah, but finds that she can’t. It would feel…too painful to speak with him. Too much (and yet too little) like talking to the father she’s lost. She only feels this way about the Timers though, oddly enough; with regards to everything else, she delights in Jeremiah’s help. He’s wonderful, truly, and she’s thankful that people like him and his wife have been part of Kal—of Clark’s life.

Part of her life, now, too.

Eventually she also tries with Alex, with her new sister, but that, too, is a difficult thing. Alex appears to be warming up to her, but slowly, very slowly. The older girl is clearly annoyed at having this thirteen-year-old _weirdo_ constantly in her presence. Annoyed at having to share her parents and her room and her home and her school and her _life_ with this girl who is _literally_ an alien. 

Still, Alex isn’t _unkind_ , and Kara thinks that underneath the prickliness of the other girl’s addresses to her, there’s a natural sort of sympathy which, though unnecessary, is not unappreciated. Kara doesn’t want to push the older girl of course, so she just doesn’t say anything about the numbers, telling herself that she’ll ask Eliza or Jeremiah tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after tomorrow.

 

Or perhaps the day _after_ the day after tomorrow.

 

As the days pass them by, she almost completely forgets to bring the Timers up. It’s draining, learning about all these human customs, though it’s also all just so interesting that she almost forgets to be tired. There’s just so much to learn about all the different kinds of people, about all the foods and drinks and music and books and…everything. Only at night does she remember, and she strokes her Timers gently, first one wrist, then the other; a familiar past-time.

 

 

 

It’s Alex who discovers the Timers about two months after Kara crash-lands into their lives, and Alex who explains the Timers to her in a way that makes more sense than any of the theories Kara had been able to come with herself. It’s also Alex who coaxes Kara into telling the Dan—their parents; though _coaxes_ may probably be too generous a word.

 

 

 

What happens is this: Alex walks into their room one afternoon to find Kara sitting on her bed in a tank top, tracing the numbers on her wrists, as she usually does when she misses Krypton. The green one seems to be set in place…well, not really _set_ , but…steady. Counting down from a set point. The black-and-white one is still rather strange though; it’s almost reached 00:00:00 before, though Kara isn’t entirely sure what’s supposed to happen when it does, and it never stays that way for long before getting stuck in a loop. Counting down to a minute that never ends.

“Kara…you have Timers?” Alex asks, so softly that it is only because of Kara’s enhanced hearing that she manages to pick out the words.

“I do,” she says. “Could you tell me what they mean?”

“People didn’t have them back on…back home?” asks Alex carefully, because Kara still hasn’t quite adjusted to the idea of Krypton being _gone_ and not mentioning the name helps a little. Kara is very grateful for the older girl’s concern.

She shakes her head. “My father tried to explain what he knew of them to me, but he was very busy, and to be honest I don’t think human Bonding customs were a large part of his preferred areas of study.” Thinking about her father hurts, but the look on Alex’s face—warmer and softer than usual—helps to numb the unpleasant feelings.

Alex nods and reaches for Kara’s wrists, the motion careful even though they have been living together for a while now, and have been sharing a room that whole time. Where Eliza and Jeremiah are quick to wrap her up in their arms for, well, any reason really, she and Alex have a non-spoken agreement to be in each other’s faces as little as possible. To respect each other’s personal space until their relationship naturally grows enough to include touch.

Kara holds out her wrists, careful not to just shove them into Alex’s grasp, and when the older girl’s fingertips touch the numbers, Kara feels…strangely comforted. Like now she has nothing to worry about because the older girl will fix things for her. Alex’s eyes are wide as she studies Kara’s wrists, and after a moment she says, “Did you know that some people say that having two Timers means you are full of more love than any one person could stand?”

“Is…that a bad thing?”

Alex looks up at her, tilts her head a bit as if considering how to say her next words. “Not really…I think the wording is kind of makes it seem that way, though, yeah. _I_ think what they mean is that people like you, with two Timers instead of one, can love so greatly that you deserve to be paid it back twofold.”

Kara feels her own eyes widen. Her mother had always said she had a great heart, but to think that humans believe that too, about people like her, makes her feel like she fits in just a bit better. People with two Timers…surely then, there are a lot of people with two Timers. “Is this common?”

“What, Timers?”

“No…I know all humans are born with a Timer…but is it common to have more than one?” Kara asks.

“Not really.” Alex shakes her head, but she’s quick to follow the action with, “They’re not _unheard of_ though. So I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Nobody will think it’s weird or anything.” Alex leans back a bit, though her grip stays gentle around Kara’s wrists. “Hey, you know…Mom and Dad are going to want to know about this.”

“I know…but…could you tell me what they mean, first, please?”

She doesn’t know why she wants to know, doesn’t know why she wants Alex to be the one to tell her and not Eliza or Jeremiah, both of whom have been nothing but lovely and accommodating this whole time. Maybe it’s because if Alex tells her, it will feel like a new moment, and not like she’s trying to replace all the times she’d asked her own mother and father about the Timers on her wrists.

“Alex?”

Though she starts a bit at the sound of her name—they don’t call each other by name very often—Alex considers her again for a moment, then nods. “Sure. Timers are basically like countdowns to when you’re supposed to meet the person—or people, in your case—whose Timer matches yours. Dad says it’s a bit more specific, like…like their distance from you in time? He describes it a lot better than I do but…well, for example, according to this,” she lifts Kara’s left wrist, and Kara is surprised when a smile breaks out on her new sister’s face. “Well what do you know?”

“What is it?”

“Looks like you and I will be meeting up with our soul mates pretty close together, Kara,” says Alex. Kara looks up in surprise. “Well, at least, you’ll be meeting _this_ soul mate of yours close to when I meet mine. Twelve years, one month, and four days, for you.”

Kara smiles. She feels a bit closer to Alex, and is thoroughly pleased when the older girl tilts one of her own wrists up into the light. There’s a Timer there, the numbers in a neat, no-nonsense style, coloured in a deep blue that reminds Kara of nights here on Earth before the stars come out. If she’s reading it correctly, then Alex will meet her soul mate in twelve years, two months, and three days.

“Are you excited?” she asks, because it’s the first thing that’s popped into her head.

Alex smiles at her, and Kara realizes that this is the first time they’ve bonded like this. “I am, yeah…but I’m kind of scared, too.” There something in the older girl’s voice that sounds…anxious, for some reason, but Kara isn’t sure what it is. She doesn’t want to push. Alex probably wouldn’t like that.

Instead she offers up what she hopes is an understanding “That makes sense” before her gaze falls to her black-and-white Timer. “Hey, Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“What about this one?” she asks, lifting her right wrist for emphasis. Alex looks down at it, then waits quietly for a minute. Then another. Then another.

“This…is weird…wow. I’ve never…we _really_ should show this to Mom and Dad.” She studies Kara’s wrist for a little while longer, then adds, “They’ll know what’s up with that second soul mate of yours.”

Kara doesn’t have time to say anything before Alex is guiding her off the bed—still gentle even though Kara is several hundred times stronger than she is. As they walk down the stairs together, Kara can’t help but smile. Alex takes charge, explaining the situation to her—their—parents in a quick, concise manner while Eliza’s face shifts from worry to wonder to an almost academic curiosity.

She and Jeremiah look at Kara’s wrists, then look at each other.

“Kara…what do you know about the multiverse theory?” Jeremiah begins, patting her hand even though he hasn’t said anything that would require her to need comfort.

She takes a minute to think back on…life before. Her father had mentioned something like that a few times, perhaps, but not in any detail. When she looks around at the Danvers family—Eliza’s concern and Jeremiah’s patience and Alex’s _very new_ (but very welcome) sisterly protectiveness—Kara feels at ease enough to offer a small smile before saying, “Not very much, I’m afraid.”

“That’s alright, Kara honey, we’ll teach you,” says Eliza, patting her shoulder. Alex, seated at Kara’s side, squeezes her free hand in reassurance as Jeremiah begins to explain, wiping his whiteboard clean of calculations only to begin writing new ones down.

Kara watches and listens as best she can, clutching her right wrist. She’s still not sure how to even _be_ human, let alone how to deal with the knowledge that she’s got only twelve years before she meets one of her soulmates, but here, in the Danvers’ home, she thinks that she’ll be okay.

 

 

 

As if in agreement, the Timers on both of her wrists itch faintly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Hope this was okay, sorry for the lateness! The bit with the Phantom Zone...let's just pretend she was awake for a bit of that, yeah? Shh, I told you, I'm going to be messing with canon a little/lot.
> 
> Also, just wanted to offer a heads up that the next update probably won't come until the **first week of March** , as my friend and I are doing a prompt exchange for Femslash February which I really need to work on...sorry!


	3. Sara: Ages 10 to 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which nobody understands Sara...

Two things happen the year that Sara Lance turns ten.

 

First, her father gets her a pet canary, which she loves even though everybody else is sick of it after the first week. Sara doesn’t really know why she’s so attached to the little bird, but she’s very careful not to let it roam too freely when her family is around, and seeing it in its cage …makes her sad. She’s not sure why. It just does.

It bothers her enough that she sometimes sneaks the bird out and carries it, held safe in her hands, around the entire house; into her parents’ room, into Laurel’s, into every place she can think. Sometimes she even lets it fly around, though only in her own room. She’s afraid of what might happen if she lets it go outside.

 

Maybe it won’t come back.

 

The second thing that happens…is more something that _doesn’t_ happen, though it should.

 

It’s Christmas eve, the eve of her tenth birthday, and Sara is more nervous than anything else. The night before a child’s tenth birthday is when the Dreams are supposed to start; the Dreams that are supposed to be the start of a person’s most important journey in life. It’s through the Dreams that people start to learn about their soul mates.

Sara isn’t really a romantic—she believes in love, but the idea that there’s _one single person_ out there for her is a bit cheesy—but she _is_ excited under all the nerves; that’s normal. After all, she’s about to “start on the journey” (ugh) to finding the person that she’s meant to love, and even though Sara fully intends to just live her life the way she wants and find her soul mate whenever she finds them, this is big.

A Big Deal™.

At least, that’s what Mom and Dad and Laurel keep on saying as she gets ready for bed, as she climbs under the covers, as she falls asleep to the sounds of their voices and the sight of snowflakes gently falling over Starling. This is possibly one of the most important bedtimes of her life, and even at ten years old Sara feels the apprehension of a very adult fear creeping in as her eyes fall shut.

 

This soul mate of hers…will she _ever_ find them?

 

And if, or when, she does…will she love them?

 

Will they love her back?

 

***

 

“…I didn’t have a Dream last night,” she says at breakfast the next morning, ignoring the looks that her parents give each other as soon as she’s said it. It’s Christmas, and her birthday, so maybe she _shouldn’t_ have lead with that, but Sara says what she’s thinking. Her parents know that. And besides, if she hadn’t said anything, they would have just asked, so really, this was an unavoidable path for their conversation to take.

Still, neither of them looks at her.

She instead looks at Laurel, who reaches out to pat her hand. At the way that her sister’s eyes seem to glisten for her benefit, Sara snorts, just a little. It’s no big deal if she didn’t have a Dream, right?

Or is it?

Regardless, Sara can’t quite bring herself to care right this second—her oatmeal is getting cold and she hates that, how gloopy and glue-like it gets. It’s gross and awful, and a meal worth avoiding if she can help it. Which, she figures, she can. Sara keeps on eating, avoiding eye contact with her family as she shovels spoonful after spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.

It’s her dad that speaks up eventually, breaking the silence, “Well…that’s fine, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ll have one soon.”

Sara hasn’t heard any stories about kids _not_ having Dreams on their birthdays, so she hopes—perhaps a little harder than she’d thought she would hope—that he’s right. Or maybe…maybe she just doesn’t have a soul mate. Maybe she’s just supposed to end up alone.

 

Just as she’s about to voice that sad thought, her wrists begin to itch.

 

And not in a normal, sometimes-skin-gets-itchy sort of way, but in a strange, there-is-something-crawling-under-her-skin sort of way that, quite frankly, freaks Sara out. She’s pretty sure it shows, because everybody is watching her, waiting for her to say something. Sara doesn’t know what to say, so she sits and tries not to scratch her stupid wrists off, struggling to continue with her breakfast.

“Sara?” Laurel asks, and Sara tries to wave her hand at her sister, to show her that she’s fine and to stop being such a big stupid dramatic crybaby. Instead, she feels her face twist into what is most likely panic as she takes in the sight of her wrist. There’s…something there. Something on her right wrist that she _definitely had_ _not_ put there herself.

It’s…a bunch of numbers. Numbers are staring back at her. Like a stopwatch, only without an ugly glow-in-the-dark screen or an itchy strap. Itchy numbers etched into her skin. No longer really itchy, only a little bit, but mostly just warm now, as if it can tell that her eyes are on it—that she’s staring at it as hard as she can. And it’s the prettiest shade of green that Sara has ever seen.

01M/00/0038

She has no idea what that means, but it doesn’t _seem_ dangerous.

As if not wanting to be outdone, her _left_ wrist continues to itch something terrible until she switches her gaze over to it. She wants to gasp at what she sees, but doesn’t, because that would be lame and she’s too cool to act lame.

It’s…a bunch of numbers too, she thinks, but she’s never seen any numbers like these. Never seen anything like them at all, really. She guesses that this must be a timer like the other one—because really that’s the only thing they _could_ be—but…it looks funny.

The symbols—because really that’s a better word for them than “numbers”—are pretty, whatever they are, written across her wrist in blue and red. Like the numbers on her right wrist, they’re counting down towards something, or at least she thinks that they are. She has no idea what it could be. They look like the kind of silly tattoos that kids in her class draw on themselves to seem “edgy”, except that no matter how hard she rubs, she can’t get them to go away.

“Sara?”

She looks up, and her parents are staring at her. Laurel looks concerned, but tangentially, in the way that only a big sister could look. In the way that Laurel _usually_ looks when it comes to Sara. The youngest Lance knows she must look crazy, just staring at her wrists in between half-hearted bites of oatmeal, and so, without really thinking about it, she shows the strange stopwatch-timer-things to her parents.

“What’s happening to me?” she asks, and she’s surprised that there’s less fear in her voice than what the fear in her head would suggest.

Her parents share a look, the kind of look that they only share when they have an idea of what’s happening and don’t really want to tell Laurel and Sara. She hates that look, because she knows it means they’re not telling her something _on purpose_. It means that her parents are lying.

 

And they’re always telling her that she shouldn’t lie; so why do they get to do it?

 

“I don’t know exactly what’s up, baby,” says her father, and he gets up so that he can hold her small hands in his. “But you just relax, okay? You’re okay.” She feels calmer in that instant than she has all morning, even if she can still make out the green on one wrist and the blue and red on the other.

“But Daddy—

“No, no,” says her father, and he shoots a quick glance at Laurel—who’d probably been about to go and run her big fat mouth off about something—before turning back to Sara, a strained smile making his face look tired and older than normal. “Let’s all just finish our breakfast, and then we can open presents! How does that sound?”

Sara smiles and lets out an enthusiastic “Sounds great!” before turning back to her oatmeal with renewed attention.

At least, while her parents and Laurel are watching her.

Whenever they turn away, she glances at either of her wrists, wondering what’s wrong with her _now_ , on top of _everything_ _else_. Later, even the allure of all her new toys and stuff— _man_ does Sara love her Christmas birthday—can’t _quite_ pull her away from the numbers and the weird symbols.

 

That night, Sara doesn’t have a Dream.

 

Again.

 

Instead, all she sees when she closes her eyes are swirls of blue and red and green.

 

 

***

 

 

She doesn’t dream for a whole year, and Sara spends that entire time making up soul mates in her head. Sometimes it’s one person, sometimes it’s two—she gets the idea for that from the numbers and symbols on her wrists, so at least they’re good for something other than always being faintly itchy and looking kinda cool. Sometimes her soul mate is a man, sometimes a woman, too, and Sara finds that she doesn’t mind either way.

 That last thought always gives her a second’s pause—at least for the first few times it shows up—but by the time her birthday rolls around again, she finds that it doesn’t bother her at all. She doesn’t mention that to anybody, not to her mom or her dad and certainly not to Laurel, no. It’s something that she keeps to herself, not because she’s _embarrassed_ —because people like her exist, and they’re _normal_ —but mostly just because she doesn’t think that she needs to say anything. She might only be ten, but this, at least, is her business and her business alone. She doesn’t need to tell _anyone_ unless she wants to.

And really, who’s she going to tell? Laurel? One of the kids she kind of plays with even though she doesn’t really like anyone?

 

As if.

 

When she’s eleven, Sara starts concentrating on a single idea, developing her ideal soul mate and making up the little details by listening really well whenever Laurel talks about her Dreams. Whenever her friends—though she doesn’t have too many of those, to be honest—talk about theirs. The whole affair, the whole idea of these Dreams is foreign to her in a way that it isn’t to anybody else. Sara listens, and she supports her friends as they celebrate every small discovery, but the whole thing just…doesn’t quite make sense.

Dreams don’t seem all too specific, really, just little hints—bits and pieces—but Sara finds that the more she hears from Laurel, from her friends, and even from her stupid babysitter, the more she wants to have Dreams too. She wants to understand the whispers and the excitement. To understand the feeling that comes from waking up with one more piece of the puzzle. To understand and not feel like she’s being shoved up against unbreakable glance, unable to take even just a piece of what everybody else has.

 

Except she never does.

 

She waits patiently though, content to spend time with her family—even Laurel, who she supposes she kind of loves—and soon she’s twelve. She starts worrying, to the point where she ignores the itching on her wrists; she wears wristbands whenever she can, barely looking at the numbers and symbols when she can’t. She pretends they don’t exist, because maybe if they don’t exist, or if she stops paying so much attention to them, she’ll stop being so _different_ and start Dreaming like anybody else.

 

She turns thirteen.

 

She turns fourteen.

 

Then she’s fifteen and starting high school and _still._ Not. A single. Dream.

 

So Sara starts to lie about it. She brushes off the four-year-old concept of her ideal soul mate and tweaks it here and there; adds a few flaws, fleshes out a believable enough collection of Things She’s Learned™. She knows it’s not _right_ to lie about it, but it _feels_ better than having the other kids stare at her like she’s an alien or something.

She manages to make it a whole year like this.

And then people find out she’s lying, and find out that she’d been making a move on the class president’s boyfriend, and Sara gets in trouble. In trouble with her mother and her father and Laurel and the entire _school_ , it feels like. People _also_ find out about the weird numbers on her wrists, which only adds to the bullying (though at least, when it comes to that, she has her family’s sympathies).

And that’s when things change

Her father makes her and Laurel take self-defence classes. She stops hanging out with the “right” people and starts hanging out with whoever’s around who doesn’t judge her for her stupid mistakes. Sara doesn’t lie to her new friends about not having a soul mate. Not really. Instead she makes up bogus legends about Dreamless people like her, glad when most of her new friends don’t question it. She still gets bullied pretty badly, but she channels her frustrations into beating up on the kids who try to get physical. She does just enough in school to keep her parents off her back. She parties, and learns to lie to cover everything up.

And, as a bonus, she’s getting to be a pretty good liar, which certainly comes in handy now that Laurel’s decided she’s going to be all _concerned_ and _protective_ half the time. Secretly, Sara wishes that her sister would go back to teasing her being annoying; the way that Laurel hovers around her is _weird_. Sara’s in her senior year now, and Laurel’s a sophomore in college, so _why_ is this happening?

 

Maybe her sister’s newfound protectiveness is one of the reasons why Sara continues to “act out”.

 

Maybe it has something to do with being called a freak _one_ too many times, whether it be for the not-having-dreams thing or the numbers-and-markings-on-her-wrists thing or just because.

Maybe she’s just sick of being a “good girl” when it winds up getting her _nothing_.

Whatever it is, she starts to amp up the levels of her bad behaviour because, well, for one thing, it’s the only way to get her sister to stop being _weird_. Laurel spends most of her time—when she isn’t doing homework or talking about Olivier Queen—being angry with Sara, which, while also not great, is preferable to her walking around with sad-big-sister eyes. And it sure as hell is a lot of fun.

Sara doesn’t like to think about it too much, about how different she is now from how she was before, but it helps to distract her from the sadness and the confusion and the mystery of her marked wrists. In the last couple of years, she’s taken to tracing over the numbers and symbols every night, wondering what they could possibly mean. Sara doesn’t know if it’s just because other people have called them weird, but she feels strangely attached now—after all, they’ve been a part of her since she was only ten. When they aren’t itchy, they even make her feel…kind of good…like they’re connected to something important. Something out there that’s waiting. Waiting for her, maybe?

 

Sara coughs, pulling herself out of her own head, remembering what her father always tells her whenever she goes out; if she spends too much time in her head while she’s out in public, she’s bound to get in trouble someday.

 

Case in point, there’s been somebody following her for a few blocks now, and while the “good girl” Sara would have just calmly reached for her phone to call her dad, or Laurel, or Ollie, or _somebody_ , this “bad girl” Sara would be more than happy to show this wannabe stalker who they’re messing with. Besides, considering the neighbourhood it’s most likely going to be some punk from school, and not an actual _threat_.

She keeps on walking, purposefully slowing down as she approaches her house so that her steps are light, quiet. In the absence of her steps she hears running and slightly laboured breaths. Sara cracks her knuckles, makes it look like she’s just looking for something in her pockets. The person has by now come to a stop near her.

They reach for her.

Just as they’ve yanked her backpack strap she turns, ready to fight, except that when she fully spins around, hands up and ready, it’s Laurel. Just Laurel. Just her sister and not some perv or an asshole from school. She puts her hands down immediately, hoping that the older girl won’t comment on her actions or reactions. Laurel just looks at her, unsurprised, and Sara is reminded that of _course_ she wouldn’t be surprised; they’ve both had to take self-defence lessons, after all. Not that Sara’s about to use her skills on her sister.

 

“Bad” as she’s been lately, Sara’s not _stupid_ ; she’s not about to hurt Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes.

 

Not so close to their house, anyway.

 

“Sara, I heard you punched a boy in the face today!” Laurel’s face is red with effort—Sara wonders where Laurel had _come_ from to have had to run so hard—and the younger Lance girl lets her sister catch her breath before shooting back an answer.

“Yeah, so?” That’s very quickly becoming her default answer.

For everything.

Laurel pushes hair from her sweaty face, somehow still managing to look _irritatingly_ well put-together as she does it. “You’ve got to stop punching people, Sara! You’re lucky I—

Sara scoffs—something she’s picked up from _Laurel_ , thank you very much. “You don’t need to protect me, Laurel.” She knows all about Miss-Future-Lawyer’s quiet meetings with people she’s punched or otherwise fought with, and she doesn’t need the help. “I can handle myself.”

Laurel’s eyes widen at that, and she looks like she’s about to cry or do something equally annoying. “You’re only _eighteen_ , Sara. Stop trying to pull this hard-ass bullshit; it’s only getting you in trouble!”

“Yeah? Well _you’re_ only nineteen. Stop trying to be so mature! Or, even better, how about you just stay _out_ of my business?”

“I’m just trying to protect you! I don’t understand why you’re acting like this!”

“Just leave me alone, Laurel.” She backs away even though her sister hasn’t so much as reached for her hand. “You don’t need to protect me and you sure as hell don’t need to understand me!”

“You’re my baby sister, Sara! It’s my _job_ to protect you! And how can I even begin to understand you if you won’t let me? I _want_ to understand you, Sara!”

There’s something in her face that tells Sara that she’s being surprisingly honest about that, but it riles her. Sure, Laurel’s been covering her ass and all that, and it _helps,_ yeah, but she keeps on getting angry about everything; and she never lets Sara explain…and anyway it’s not like _Laurel_ would ever understand. How could she possibly understand what Sara’s been going through all these years when everybody and their mother is sure that Laurel’s soul mate is going to end up being either Tommy Merlyn or Oliver Queen? How could she possibly know what it’s been like for Sara for the last eight years?

 

How could Laurel possibly even begin to know what it feels like, what _Sara_ feels like knowing that she’s just so fucked up that Dreams don’t exist for her? All she has are the numbers on her wrists, and she still doesn’t have the first fucking idea what they could mean.

 

Sara doesn’t say any of that, of course, instead countering with the tried-and-true “Well _maybe_ I’m not a baby anymore and you should just—

“Girls!” snaps their father’s voice, and Sara watches her sister turn to their father with an apology already on her lips. “What’s going on here?”

“Sara almost got in trouble with some really bad kids today, Dad,” says Laurel, and Sara’s eyes snap straight to her sister’s. Laurel doesn’t _look_ like she’s lying, but this is the first Sara’s heard of any “really bad kids”. “She punched a guy in the face during lunch, and some of his friends were gonna jump her later. I heard about it as I was heading home, and I went to go see the principal. We spoke about it, so it should be fine.”

Sara wonders how the hell Laurel had managed to pull _that_ off without getting their parents involved, but she doesn’t have time to say anything. “So, that’s what that phone call was about? Well, thank you for looking out for your sister, Laurel,” says their father, and when he turns to look at Sara he isn’t even angry. He’s just…tired. “I won’t ask why you punched that boy, Sara, but I’m going to ask you not to do it again. Please.”

She knows that her father knows that she won’t—can’t—promise that, so Sara settles for a nod and says, “Sure, Daddy, I’ll _try_ to be better.” Without so much as a word of thanks to her sister, Sara turns and walks up the stairs, letting herself into the house. Her mother isn’t home yet, so hopefully her father will be able to convince Laurel to keep her big mouth shut. He usually does, and, Sara thinks as she heads up to her room, today should be no different.

She leaves her door a fraction of the way open, ears pricking at the sound of her name coming out of Laurel’s mouth. “—losing it!”

“Now come on, honey, try to understand your sister.”

“Half the reason she acts like this is because you let her get away with it, Dad! Why don’t you just tell her to pull herself together?”

“She’s only seventeen, Laurel, and she’s had a tough go of things. You know that.”

“I know but come on, Dad, it’s not’s like she gets to act all _crazy_ just because she has those numbers on her wrist instead of a soul ma—

“Laurel! Stop.” Sara hears her father’s breathing hitch. “Look, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. But you _know_ how hard this must be for Sara. And I know you love your sister. Just…try to be patient with her. For me and your mother. Please.”

Laurel doesn’t say anything, but Sara can hear her sister suck in a breath. “Okay, fine.” She says something else, something that Sara doesn’t catch, and then there’s the sound of steps leaving the kitchen, heading towards the stairs. Sara waits until her sister has started up the stairs before gently pushing the door all the way closed, throwing herself on her bed and jamming her headphones on her head. She turns, facing her canary; silly little Tweety whistles as sweetly as ever, perhaps trying to calm her down—at least, she thinks that Tweety’s humming. She can’t be sure; her music—while not deafening—is louder than usual.

 

That doesn’t stop Laurel’s voice from reaching her, though.

 

“Sara? Sara, I’m coming in.” Sara doesn’t reply to that, because it doesn’t matter what she says—Laurel’s coming in anyway. Instead, she only rolls over so she’s on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her door opens, then closes again. Sara resists the urge to heave a sigh. Her bed dips just a bit when Laurel sits beside her, but Sara’s too tired to so much as complain. “Sara, I know you can hear me, and I’m not going to ask you to talk. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry. You’re right; I don’t understand you, and I probably never will, and it isn’t my job…but I can see that you’re hurting. And while I think you can be selfish a lot of the time, I _know_ that you’re a good person. So I’m sorry…and I love you, Sara.”

Laurel puts a hand on her shoulder and Sara ignores her first impulse; to shrug it off. Instead she sighs, turns, and takes one of her sister’s hands in one of hers. “I love you too, Laurel.”

Her big sister smiles at her, and says, “I know you punched that boy because he said something about…your wrists. Just…try not to pick any more fights, okay? You’re so close, Sara.”

“I know,” she says, letting her sister play with her hair. “It’s just hard. But I mean, I feel like…” she stops. How can she explain to her sister that she’s noticed changes; that the blue-and-red markings are numbers too now, and not just cool symbols? How can she explain that she feels better when she looks at them, like they’re giving her strength? She’s sure her sister would say that she sounds crazy, so Sara keeps her mouth shut and lets Laurel fiddle with her hair some more.

 

The next day, she punches another kid, but she tells Laurel all about it before her sister can get angry. Laurel doesn’t look like she can understand what’s motivating Sara, and honestly Sara isn’t sure of it herself all the time. All that she knows is that her sister couldn’t possibly understand what she’s going through.

 

At night, as she traces her fingers over the green numbers, then the blue-and-red ones, she thinks that maybe, just maybe, _nobody_ could.

 

Nobody except for her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're _back_ beautiful people. Normally I wouldn't include a chapter note but this time I feel I must, because I've noticed something that I'm sure many of you have noticed, too. Namely, that the Supergirl writers cannot seem to agree on how old some of their characters are *cough* Kara most specifically* cough*. Close the tab/window if you don't care because honestly it's a lot of just me rambling.  <3
> 
> So, as of Supergirl 2x12, Lena's official age is supposedly 24 (I've not been able to watch regularly but Tumblr is great) right?
> 
> Anyway, in 2017 Lena is supposed to be 24, Kara is...somewhere between 24 and 26 (because the writers don't seem to know basic math) in Earth Time because of the Phantom Zone, and Sara is 30/turning 30, right?
> 
> See the thing is, the first chapter of SHTTIB says that Lena is also going to be turning 30 in 2017 (she gave me a slightly older vibe AND it was written before canon evidence of her age came out so _shush_ ). Now, I really don't want to have to go back and rewrite the first chapter because I actually (for once) am pleased with it... 
> 
> So, just to avoid any confusion, and because you know I'm already messing around with canon here and there because it's an AU no matter how closely I stick to canon, I just wanted to let you know that I'm running with their ages in 2017 being Lena: 30, Kara: 25, Sara: 30. Just so we're clear. Okay? Okay.
> 
> Stay beautiful you brilliant people, love you all.


	4. Lena: Ages 20 to 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena works hard and learns the meaning of fear...

Life hasn’t been particularly kind to Lena since her alien Timer became legible on human terms.

 

She’s twenty years old and Superman has begun to rise in a way that disturbs her alien-hating mother. Even worse is that her brother has begun to change…to become something much different than the kind, caring, brilliant man that he’d been, and Lena fears that he’s been in a spiral ever since…well, ever since _before_ their father passed away. Since before Lex took on the responsibilities and stresses of running LuthorCorp.

Truth be told, Lex hasn’t been the same since his friendship with Clark Kent deteriorated, for reasons which Lena suspects but does not know for sure.

Either way, her brother has been slipping, and she feels _helpless_ as she watches him turn into something—into someone—that she no longer knows. Her memories of him, of all the times he’s protected her, guided her, taught her things she never knew she could possibly learn…those are what she clings to now. The Luthor home is stifling, surprisingly so after years away at boarding school, and Lena decides that she’d be better off studying elsewhere. Outside of the city. Away from all the intrigue and the social posturing and the generally unpleasant atmosphere that has permeated Metropolis of late. Lena decides that she’s going to at least _try_ ; her chances of getting out of here are good. It isn’t as if Lillian will object, and Lex…well, hopefully he still cares enough for her safety that he’ll agree to send her away; to protect her from his war against Superman.

Lena doesn’t like to feel that she’s running but she has very few palatable options; and besides, she knows of quite a few impressive schools that would love to have her. Schools far away from here, in cities where nobody knows her name (or at least, where nobody will _judge_ her for having her name). Cities where she might find good company, though even neutrality would be better than what she’s currently got. She feels alone in Metropolis, hates it with a passion that she cannot describe, and all that she wants is to get out, _get out_. Getting away from it all, from this city, from the name that has branded a target into her back…that, and finding her soul mates, is all that she can dream of right now.

 

Not that she can ever escape her name, not really, but surely there must be somewhere where the general opinion on the Luthor family is not the violently negative one that has (rightly) taken over almost every _decent_ person in Metropolis.

 

As soon as classes end for the semester, Lena approaches family with her plans—though calling what she, Lillian and Lex share a _family_ is certainly a stretch—and, to her surprise, they both seem pleased by her decision. Lena isn’t sure that she cares to question this, so she doesn’t. It almost feels too easy (if she’s honest, she’s rather leery of it all) but as she’d hoped, Lex tells her that he’d rather she was safe, much as he wants her to stay nearby. Lillian stands off to the side as Lex takes Lena under his arm and asks her where she would most like to study, but Lena thinks that she can see…well, something perhaps bordering maternal affection in her mother’s eyes.

Now, Lena isn’t gullible, hasn’t been since she was a child, so she knows better than to think that Lillian cares about _her_ happiness—all her mother can see is Lex—but she allows herself to believe, even for just a second, that Lillian wants her to be safe too. Bolstered by the knowledge that she goes without any bad blood between them—well, any _more_ bad blood, she chooses a school that’s far enough away that the Luthor influence isn’t _too_ strong, but close enough that she can still come home quickly (just in case, her brother says, though she isn’t sure what the “in case” is supposed to be for).

With that decided, Lena finds that packing for the next two years of her life is much easier than she’d thought now that she knows that she will at least have the Luthor money to support her. It isn’t that she’s afraid of having to make it on her own—she’s much more resourceful than everybody else seems to think—but she _does_ admit that having the safety net that Lex intends to set up for her is a benefit that she would be foolish to turn down. And Lena, for all that she wants to distinguish herself from her family, is certainly not willing to seem foolish.

Besides, she’s doing all of this because she’s a Luthor—may as well use the money that comes along with the uncomfortable status.

It is with this mindset that Lena boards one of her family’s private jets—Lex would have a fit if his sister travelled with _other people_ —and she feels confident, unafraid of the possibilities of the future as she’s flown to the place where she’ll make a new start for herself. The second the jet leaves Metropolis she feels…lighter, somehow. Lena isn’t afraid of anything, not really, because she knows that she’s smart and capable and she’s willing to work hard to achieve everything that she wants to in life. That, and she’s content in the knowledge that there’s nothing to be frightened of where she’s going.

 

Nothing to be frightened of as she settles into her LutherCorp-bought apartment.

 

Nothing to be frightened of as she starts the new semester, enrolled in a full course-load and then some, because she knows that she can handle it.

 

Nothing to be frightened of here, in a place where she feels freer than she’d ever felt in Metropolis.

 

 

 

 

 

And then her black-and-white Timer disappears briefly one day, and Lena realizes that there’s always going to be something to be frightened of, no matter where she is.

 

 

 

It happens while she’s in class listening to a professor with entirely too much pride in his voice as he _incorrectly_ teaches the class a theory that Lex had taught her years ago, and better.

At first, Lena doesn’t think anything is amiss; she’s only glancing at her Timers out of habit, really, as she does when she’s stressed or excited or sad or anxious or angry or bored or…whenever (admittedly, she does glance at them rather more than she thinks most people should, rolling back her sleeves just enough for her to be able to peek at the numbers even though most other people don’t care if the whole world can see their wrists). She starts with her right wrist, because it continually amazes her that she could have the good luck to have an alien soul mate come to Earth without her needing to board a space ship. As if agreeing with her that it was a stroke of the best fortune, indeed, the red-and-blue Timer seems to smile as the numbers tick down—less than a decade to go, now.

Lena allows herself to brush a thumb over it, smiling, before her eyes invariably flick over to her other wrist.

The black-and-white Timer winks up at her as it changes, looping into itself over-and-over again. She’s by now completely certain that this soulmate is from another universe, which is…strange and a little worrying, except that she’s trying to trust in the world’s design a bit more lately. Besides, isn’t this part of the reason why she’s studying so hard, working herself well past her limits as much as her body will allow? To find this person that helps to complete her, this person that she, Lena, can help feel complete?

She strokes the black-and-white Timer a bit more firmly than she had the blue-and-red, finger tracing the tiny, superscripted one just above the changing numbers. If all the research that she’s been doing is true, then things might be very difficult for whoever has this Timer’s mate. Her studies have so far not yielded enough results to be conclusive, but from what she’s seen it’s entirely possible that the different Earths of the different universes all have different means of connecting soul mates—and, in some cases, no way of doing this at all. Lena hopes that her soul mate (this one, obviously, as by now the other is surely aware that there is someone in the world waiting for them) hasn’t been too upset by the circumstances in which they find themselves.

“I’ll find you,” she murmurs to the mark under her breath, unable to keep herself from saying it. She has to believe that she’ll find them, that they’ll find each other. Even though she knows that her soul mate couldn’t possibly hear the things whispered to the Timer, she does it anyway. It’s comforting to _her_ , she thinks as her breath ghosts over the black-and-white numbers. “I promise.”

 

It dulls noticeably, nearly fading into her skin.

 

Lena’s stomach freezes.

 

The numbers return, struggling to remain visible before faltering again. One of Lena’s soul mates is in danger, _mortal_ danger.

 

She picks up her things, avoiding her classmates’ curious looks and the irritated harrumph from her professor. _Please, please, please._ Lena doesn’t think she’s ever run so quickly in her life, but she nearly sprints to her car, almost twisting her heel in the process. She knows that there’s nothing she can do, not really, but if she’s watching her soul mate _die_ right in front of her—in a metaphorical sense—she sure as hell doesn’t want to do it in an auditorium filled with a hundred-other people and a pompous windbag.

It’s a struggle to drive the relatively short distance from campus to her apartment, but Lena makes it without hurtling into a lamppost (though on her way in she does knock over and break a vase which is, thankfully, empty). Her left wrist is _burning_. The numbers are fading, on and off, and Lena doesn’t even know who’s on the other side of the Timer, but she’s scared for them.

 

She’s terrified.

 

One of her soul mates could quite possibly be _dying,_ and she’d just been sitting in class listening to a lecture. Completely safe. She knows that logically there’s no reason to blame herself, but she feels guilty. If only she were a bit older, a bit smarter, a bit more self-sufficient…if only she could afford to develop some of her theories further, could potentially begin to explore the multiverse, to find whoever it is who’s tied to her, whose life is currently in danger—

“Calm down, Lena, come on,” she tells herself.

Where are they?

What’s happening?

How much more time do they have?

Lena knows that she’s getting ahead of herself in her panic, but she can’t help it. Her soul mate is suffering, the situation in which they find themselves so bad that they might not make it through alive, and she’s here. She’s sitting, curled up in a ball, tucked safely away in her own universe without any way to so much as offer _comfort_ , let alone _help_.

Oh, and what about her other soul mate? Surely they’re feeling this too, whoever they are…surely they’re as sick with worry as she is. Are they older than her, trying their best to concentrate on whatever they’re doing even though they can feel the burning too? Or are they younger, or just her age, and just as scared, just as confused, just as unable to control the shaking? Just as unable to control the fear? She hopes that whoever they are, they have more support than she does, because right now she is scared and helpless and _alone_ and it is the most pathetic thing that Lena has ever felt.

 

She feels awful.

 

Her left wrist burns so strongly that she is afraid to move her hand, afraid to look down, afraid to breathe. What might she see, if she looks down? Will her wrist be bare, her soul mate’s life cut short before she’d even begun to work on a way to find them? She doesn’t know if she could live with that.

She doesn’t _want_ to have to live with that.

How would she and her other soul mate ever be able to be happy knowing that they’d lost a part of their bond in some foreign universe, long before ever getting the chance to be together fully? Yes, in that case they would have each other, and yes that would be a balm for the emptiness in some ways, but Lena thinks—optimist though she still is despite Lillian’s bitterness and Lex’s darkness—that the three of them were _meant_ for each other.

As a trio, a set, incomplete without even one piece.

She absolutely _must_ believe that, must hold on to the hope that the universe—the universes, in this case—would never be so cruel. Life hasn’t been very kind to Lena (though of course it has shown her a very privilege-heavy sort of unkindness) but she _must_ believe that the universes _want_ this to happen. She must believe that they’ll be able to weather their individual storms until they can stand together.

 

As far as Lena is concerned, she has _nothing_ else to believe in but this.

 

The burning stops, and she is terrified all over again. She doesn’t know if she could handle seeing a bare wrist, not now that she has had a decade of waiting and watching and wondering under her belt. Ten years of dreaming of the day when she and her soul mates finally meet. Ten years of hoping and wishing and praying for things to work out for _once_ in her life.

A soul mate from another universe is intriguing enough without the emotional attachment that Lena has formed to the idea of who they might be; somebody clever and strong; somebody perhaps a bit reckless, perhaps a bit fearless, but undoubtedly understanding...she knows that she’s only been making up those traits in her head, but it feels right, and Lena wants to meet this person. She wants to meet them and, more than that, she wants to fall in love with them, if they’ll let her. Somebody to love, who’ll love her too.

 

Lena looks down.

 

Please, please, _please._

 

“Oh, thank _god,_ ” she exhales, thankful that she is alone and there is no one to watch the tremble of her body as she cradles her left wrist close to her chest, muttering words of thanks to a deity that she hasn’t believed in since she was a child. “Thank god you’re alive.” _Alive,_ being the best she can think for her soul mate, because the Timer, though the numbers are gaining strength against her skin, feels…different, somehow. It seems heavier, suddenly, the black-and-white design less whimsical, as if there are shadows coming from somewhere behind it. Lena traces the numbers, still caught in their familiar loop of one-minute-more.

She brings her lips towards her Timer and whispers to it, knowing, as she so often tells herself, that her soul mate couldn’t possibly hear her words, or feel her intended encouragements that they _will_ survive. “You’ll be fine. You’re strong,” she says, because somehow she doubts that destiny—nebulous concept though it is—would look at her and offer her a weak person as a soul mate. “You will survive, and you’ll find us; we’ll all find each other. We’ll all be happy. Together.”

 _We’ll all be happy_.

_Together._

Lena repeats those words to herself and to the Timers, over and over, and over again, as many times as it takes for the panicked staccato of her heart to give way for a calmer beat. They _will_ be happy. They _will_ find each other. Optimist that she is, Lena has to hold on to that. No matter how terrified she is at the dawning realization that she now has first-hand proof of what it feels like to lose—even if only momentarily—a soul mate before the bond can be recognised. Her eyes flick down to the blue-and-red Timer, and she’s grateful that it’s vibrancy has not been lost; she hopes that she never has to experience anything like that again; it might kill her the next time.

_Stay safe._

_Both of you._

 

 

 

_Please._

 

That night, and for many nights following the death-scare, Lena falls asleep only after watching the black-and-white Timer loop in on itself for hours. She knows that it is irrational to be this frightened, that she can do nothing other than worry, which is not helping any of them, but she cannot help what she feels. Lena knows that some of her motivations for the fear are selfish, but she’s only human, and really, when it comes down to it she just hopes that her soul mate is okay.

 

She needs them to be okay.

 

Lena monitors her wrists closely for the next _year_ afterwards, suffering another scare like the first about halfway through, but after a while the black-and-white Timer returns to its former strength, although the shadowed quality doesn’t ever disappear. She doesn’t know what that might mean, but so long as she can _see_ the numbers, the looping of minute after minute after minute, she thinks that everything will (hopefully) turn out just fine.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Lena graduates with honours and immediately launches into a post-graduate program, working with leaders in her chosen field. They’re mostly men, mostly older, mostly too concerned with looking down her shirt or up her skirt to really care what she has to say, but that suits Lena just fine. She takes advantage of what knowledge they do have, occasionally referring to old notes of Lex’s, and she works harder than she ever has in her life. Throughout it all, her soul mates—or at least, the indirect idea of them—are with her at every step; exuberant at every triumph; consoling at every defeat.

 

Now that she’s out from under her mother’s direct influence she wears both her Timers openly, not caring if people stare—once, Lex had told her that her two Timers made her special, and she’s going to own that as well as she can. She finds that the people she studies alongside are more intrigued than anything else, and Lena is glad for the scientific nature of their curiosity. Besides, in their world of science and experiments and technology, the lore surrounding two Timers can only hold interest for so long before it is replaced.

 

Soon, lost in mountains of coursework and a need for practical experience, everybody forgets about Lena and her two soul mates.

 

With all the stress that surrounds her in her new environment, she barely has time to worry about them herself anymore, though she still checks the Timers every night before she sleeps. She still runs a nervous finger over the shapes, able to map out precisely when the black-and-white Timer will stutter; almost able to feel something vaguely resembling joy from the blue-and-red Timer. Lena finds that she likes watching that one better; not because she feels more attached—and how could she, not knowing who has her Timer’s match—but because it’s _consistent._ She doesn’t fear its disappearance the way she does the Timer on her left wrist, though she knows better than to allow herself to feel comfort in such a false sense of security.

 

Anything could happen; something that she knows all too well.

 

Day in and day out Lena works, eventually learning how to sharpen her tongue against her male colleagues and instructors; she earns their respect through this boldness and her proven talent, the efforts of long nights and exhausting her intelligence and ingenuity to its very limits. She learns how to create things from out of her head by using science, how to develop technologies the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since Lex…before the Superman days, before the obsession, before her brother made choices that made it so that wielding the Luthor name in public could earn nothing for a person but fear and contempt. The whole _world_ knows about it by now, about her brother’s madness, and Lena is afraid to think that there are probably no reputable souls who think that a Luthor could be a force for good.

 

She wonders about her other soul mate, the one who’d come to Earth only a few years ago; what do _they_ think of the Luthor name?

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Another year passes, and then another, and soon Lena has completed her master’s degree in two years as opposed to the suggested three. Lex calls, but it is brief and mostly dry, though he sounds sincere enough when he tells her he loves her. Lillian sends her a perfunctory gift of flowers the night before graduation, an expensive (if impersonal) bouquet which Lena gives to one of her favourite professors as thanks. The remains of her family haven’t spoken to her much in recent years (and why would they) but Lena finds that though she yearns for their approval still—some part of her says that she always will—she isn’t heartbroken when nobody is there to cheer for her upon her graduation.

Instead of searching for faces she knows that she won’t see in the crowd, she folds her hands together, thumbs brushing close to her wrist. She’s done this for herself, mostly—because it would be a shame to have all these ideas and no way to personally see them through to development—but she hopes, in no small part, that when her soul mates learn of her accomplishments, they will be proud of what she has done. Lena just wants somebody, for once in her life, to be proud of her as she is.

 

When Lex calls to congratulate her, she can tell that he’s mostly proud because she’s a Luthor; it’s like he can barely _see_ Lena anymore.

 

She declines Lex’s offer to work at LuthorCorp, convincing him that it would be safer for her to just learn as much as possible, to better help him. Though she despairs at how readily he agrees to fund her education further if it means that she will one day help him take down Superman, Lena cannot help her brother, and she knows that now. She has no way to deter Lex from his all-too- _well_ -publicized war against aliens—Superman, specifically—and so she once again applies herself to her studies.

 

This time, Lena begins to work on her understanding of the multiverse, calling in favours from all the people she knows who have done studies on the subject. Her black-and-white Timer has been acting as it had prior to the incident, but there’s a constant feeling of unease about her whenever she looks down at her left wrist. Lena’s worried as hell for her soul mate, in all truth, and she doesn’t know if she can wait for some divine sign from the universes. If destiny is going to be tricky, then she might as well do everything she can to cut past the bullshit and get to her soul mate.

“So, let me get this straight,” says one of the few people she almost considers a friend—an old acquaintance from boarding school whose parents are wholly in support of Lex’s agenda, though Lena’s friend is not. “You’re studying the multiverse because you…think that you have a soul mate somewhere out there? And you want to jump universes until you find them?”

Lena sighs, dragging a hand through her hair. “I know it sounds crazy, but I just _know_ I’m right,” she says, grateful when the topic is dropped in favour of gossip from a social circle that she has never cared for.

 

She knows she’s right, her whole _being_ tells her that she’s right, but Lena knows better than to expect that other people will be so willing to believe her.

 

After all, those other people haven’t had to feel what she’s felt ever since those _awful_ experiences of a few years ago. They haven’t had to worry about a person who, by all rights, they shouldn’t even be aware of. To fear for the life of a person who might not even know what the Timers on their wrists _mean_ , let alone know that they have soul mates who are waiting for them in a completely different universe. Lena hopes that wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, that they’re safe and that they’re happy, even if they might feel at a loss whenever their eyes meet their wrists.

Every night, Lena lies awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking, thinking, always thinking. Thinking of all the different materials that she’s going to need, thinking of where to get them, of who to trust. She closes her eyes and sees pages and pages of calculations and diagrams, of numbers being scratched out and circled and rewritten and erased. She’s become something of a woman obsessed, perhaps, but this isn’t just for her sake.

“I’m doing this for us,” she says, holding both of her wrists before her face. “Just hold on.”

 

She knows that they can’t hear her, but she needs them to hold on for her, needs them to be there for her now that there’s nobody else who will. Lex is lost in himself, in the shadows he has allowed to engulf him, and Lillian doesn’t care about Lena enough to even check in on her; Lena is certain the woman never loved anyone aside from Lex. Even now, Lillian is concerned with nothing save for her son’s safety, though everything she says and does only pushes him closer and closer towards a ledge that neither of them can see. Neither of them has time for Lena.

She feels a tear roll from her eye, knows that it will come to rest on her pillow, but Lena doesn’t mind. “We’ll be happy,” she says as she allows her arms to fall to her sides. About herself and her soul mates and the happiness that they will share once they are all together. “We’ll be together. As long as you two _behave_ yourselves.”

 

Her Timers wink at her in the dark, and as she closes her eyes, exhausted from a long day’s work, Lena smiles.


	5. Kara: Ages 15 to 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kara learns about loss and wonders about the future...

Losing Jeremiah Danvers so soon after forming a filial bond with him is not expected, but even less so than that is the wave of grief that comes over Kara at the loss. It is different from the grief that she had felt upon the death of her home—not the same raging, howling, hungry beast it had been then—but it is present and persistent. It is just as hopeless a feeling as Kara remembers from those last few seconds on Krypton; just as draining and cruel as the feeling that had visited her so often during her semi-stasis in the Phantom Zone.

 

To Kara, it feels just as cold.

 

 _That_ —though she has come to love Jeremiah in her own way—is not expected.

 

Even less expected than that, however, is how much she has come to rely on Eliza and Alex in the year following Jeremiah’s death, and how much they have come rely on her in return. She and Alex, bonded over many tearful nights spent in sifting through memories of Jeremiah, no longer look at their imposed sisterhood as an imposition so much as a blessing. Often, Eliza joins them, and Kara is glad that she can relate to her foster mother without feeling _too_ much pain. Though the elder Danvers women are quick to point out that they should not be placing such heavy emotions on Kara, she shakes her head each time, allowing them to continue.

Grief, as she has found, is best dealt with as it comes.

The Phantom Zone, for all that she would never wish for anyone to find themselves stranded there, had at least managed to teach her _that_ before her body had shut down on itself. It is true what Eliza says—that life has been unfair to one so young—and Kara _has_ had to pick up the fragments of her life and start over anew, yes; but in doing so she has been afforded the chance to heal; a chance for which she will be forever grateful. With the help of the Danvers family, she has taken that chance, and so far, things have been working out better than anybody could have hoped.

 

Aside from losing Jeremiah.

 

Days melt into each other at an almost alarming pace, and Kara watches her adoptive mother and sister grow into their new realities with a grace that surprises her. She had not known that humans had such a capacity for resilience, though Clark (during one of his all-too-rare visits) had hinted at it. It is a happy discovery, and Kara is glad to know that they will not surrender to their grief.

 

It gives her even more reason to combat her own sadness.

 

Not only that, but it gives her a reason to embrace what she still has. She is not the most unfortunate of beings, not by a long-shot; because, as Alex reminds her on nights when nightmares of a dying red sun and a planet in shambles are all that Kara sees, she is no longer alone. And, as Eliza reassures her on nights when the solace of Alex’s arms is not enough to calm her, she will not be alone again; not if Eliza and Alex Danvers have anything to say about that.

“And I also have the two of you,” Kara whispers often to the Timers on her wrists, because even if they cannot hear her, they are with her anyway. Of that, she has no doubt. Kara smiles as the green Timer ticks away steadily, chuckling (as she always does) at the way the black-and-white one winks at her as it restarts the minute-long loop in which it has found itself stuck as of late.

She knows that people worry about their soul mates—about finding each other on time, about if there can be anything done to speed the process along—but for her part, she’s willing to be patient.

All that matters to her is that she has love right now, and love on the way, and the more Kara thinks about that, the better she feels. The love that Alex and Eliza supply, and the promise supplied by her Timers…all of it proves to be enough to tide her over, to make Kara even _stronger_ , until she can get through whole days, then weeks, then months without missing Krypton—her mother, her father, the baby Kal-El had been—so much that it hurts. Together with Alex and Eliza, Kara begins to move forward, picking up all the pieces that she can as they rebuild themselves and each other.

 

 

 

She’s halfway through fifteen years of age when Kara realizes that she is settling into her new life on Earth rather beautifully. She feels that she has made leaps and bounds—in no small part thanks to the family which had so kindly stepped up to help heal the wounds left by Kara’s loss—but Kara knows that she has only barely scratched the surface. There is still so much to learn, and humanity, though nowhere near as _enlightened_ as her own people had been, is constantly doing amazing things. Things that Kara herself might never have imagined possible had she never been…forced…to leave her home. Her first home.

 

Of late, Earth has felt like home too.

 

Regardless, in the last two years Kara has experienced wonder and joy, has seen things that she would never have dreamed of back home…but she has also experienced an addition of grief; something that she would never have believed to be possible after watching Krypton burn. Kara doesn’t like to dwell on those dark thoughts though, and so she doesn’t, instead focusing on how she has learned and how she has grown from the moment that Jeremiah Danvers disappeared

Alex and Eliza have made remarkable strides in so short a time; they have picked up the pieces Jeremiah left (unwillingly) behind, and they have crafted a life for themselves and for Kara that makes her feel comforted and safe and loved. Things she had once believed she would never feel again. She is grateful for them every day, grateful for the things they have already done for her, and the things that they intend to do. They love her, they say, and upon reflection she realizes that she loves them too.

 

Life, for a while, is good.

 

Quiet.

 

Nothing out of the ordinary.

 

Kara goes to human school separately from Alex for the first time. She’s pleasantly surprised when she comes across rare tidbits of knowledge that had been previously unknown to her, most often in history classes. Maths and sciences are simple for her—so simple that she must purposefully answer some things wrong—but Kara doesn’t mind. She likes the creative classes a touch more, finds that turning a phrase or placing paint to canvas gives her a freedom that she is not sure she has ever experienced.

Life on Krypton had been orderly by design, her every movement planned down to the last second. Deviation had been controlled, narrowed into certain pathways marked by choices which were offered sporadically, at best, and only offered in certain areas of her life. Everything had been for a purpose, everything had been part of a larger picture.

Even after coming to Earth, after Clark brought her to the Danvers’ home, things had felt like that; scheduled down to the most minute details, though this time out of necessity. How else could she have learned so much about the world in those first few months, if Eliza and Jeremiah had not sat down with her at every opportunity? She had only been allowed to go to school with Alex after proving that she could pass for a regular human child, and even then, she had made mistakes. So many mistakes.

She had often failed to fit what human adults had believed was an appropriate model of childish behaviour, and it was only after much trial and error that Kara had managed to strike a balance. Ultimately, it had felt like her old life, and Kara hadn’t been sure if she liked the similarities all too well despite their familiarity.

 

Perhaps that’s why she has taken to painting so quickly now that she has the option to pursue it; there are rules there too, of course, but when the project is personal, just for herself, Kara is free to do whatever she wants.

 

At first, she paints Krypton, or, at least, memories of Krypton. She becomes enamoured with the idea that she is recapturing a bit of her planet’s beauty, and the focus of her paintings both personal and otherwise is almost always something she remembers from her life…before. The few flowers that had bloomed, the shapes of the buildings, the way things had looked silhouetted in red light; for Kara, it is like she is visiting her home, even though such a thing is no longer possible. Her teachers praise her imagination, and Kara is reminded by their kindness that she must pretend that she has never seen the rays of a red sun spilling across tall buildings with her own two eyes. _That_ is more difficult to accept than she had thought it would be, but Kara manages, sticking to Earth-appropriate imagery whenever she paints at school.

As Eliza so often reminds her, speaking low and gentle, she’ll be safer if she hides that part of herself; that part that makes her an _other,_ and not just like everybody else.

Kara finds, however, that it is difficult to hide her otherness in some ways. The two Timers, for example—the ones that both Alex _and_ Eliza tell her to wear proudly—prove to be a draw for all sorts of people. Even amongst humans, _all_ of whom are born with Timers (at least on this Earth), having more than one is decidedly rare. Some question who the owner of the green Timer could be, running through names of people Kara doesn’t recognize—celebrities and the like, she later learns, the guesses part of a game that is customary amongst the younger humans. Others look closely and ask Kara why the black-and-white Timer is _different._ Luckily for Kara, Eliza’s scientific explanations (often drawn-out and purposefully overly-complicated) ward off most of the inquirers, but some are persistent.

When it is Kara herself who asks, Eliza expounds on to Jeremiah’s theory—that one of Kara’s soul mates was born on another Earth—and Kara can only nod her head and agree. That would certainly make sense. After all, nobody else that Kara has ever met has a Timer with a number superscripted above the rest. Written documentation of the phenomena is also scarce, though a few multiverse-positive forums on the internet—such a delightful human invention, the internet—point to a few other cases such as her own.

She isn’t sure if she should be concerned about the common thread connecting all these stories—that the people with soul mates in other universes had ultimately ended up _alone_ —but Kara soon find that she has bigger things to worry about. _Much_ bigger things.

 

***

 

She’s at home with Eliza, who’s working on something that Kara hasn’t yet had the chance to ask about. It isn’t her job to poke around in her foster mother’s business, after all, but rather to remind Eliza to take breaks when she needs to. She’s about to head up to Eliza’s office to do just that when her wrist starts to hurt, and Kara, startled, lets out a yelp of pain.

 

It isn’t so much that it hurts that scares her, so much as the fact that it _shouldn’t_.

_Nothing_ on Earth—aside from the Kryptonite that Lex Luthor has used against Ka-Clark-Superman on many an occasion—should be able to hurt her, but _this_? This is painful. It’s unlike anything that she’s ever felt, and she doesn’t have time to worry about how she’s crushed the doorknob out of shape because her legs give out from underneath her and she stumbles, hitting the floor with a hard thud. She’s honestly more shocked than in pain, until her wrist sears with heat again and she _knows_ , without question, that she’s hurting.

 

Why does it hurt so badly?

 

It feels like somebody is branding her right wrist where the black-and-white Timer should be, and Kara feels tears leak from her eyes as Eliza opens her office door. She looks up, her foster mother’s face blurry through the saltwater in her eyes. Kara can barely form words as she cradles her right wrist close to her body, watching the black-and-white Timer fade, then darken, then fade again.

“Kara!” The older woman is careful as she helps Kara to her and Alex’s room, and the concern on her face is palpable. “What’s wrong, Kara?”

She holds up her wrist in response, gingerly. “It _hurts_ , Eliza.”

To her surprise, Eliza does nothing except stare for a moment, and then Kara is wrapped up in the older woman’s comforting arms. Eliza starts to whisper things to her as the pain escalates, and Kara doesn’t understand what’s happening. Alex had never mentioned this. Neither of her Earth-parents had mentioned this. What’s happening to her? To her soul mate? Is this about them?

 

Something from a schoolground conversation comes to mind, and Kara gasps.

 

Is one of her soul mates—the one who isn’t even on this Earth—dying?

 

The world—no, _destiny_ —wouldn’t be so cruel, would it?

 

“Eliza,” Kara says, her adoptive mother’s name coming out more like a pained groan than anything else. “It hurts so badly.”

“I know, Kara, sweetie, I know,” she says, rubbing circles over Kara’s back. “Shh. Shh.”

Kara knows that Eliza must understand what’s happening to her, but she can’t even bring herself to ask any questions. She can barely speak. It feels worse than finding out that Jeremiah wasn’t coming home. It feels so, so much worse. Kara isn’t even sure that she has an experience on hand to compare this too—the mental anguish that seems to want to outstrip the physical pain—and then she realizes that there is something that has made her feel this way before.

 

It feels like Krypton is dying all over again.

 

That’s what it feels like.

 

The only difference is that instead of Krypton, Kara pictures a person being blurred out, being erased from her life without her having any choice in the matter. It isn’t _fair_! She doesn’t even know who they are, has no real idea of how to find them, and yet all that she can do for them is sit here, safe in Eliza’s arms, and watch as the only thing she has of her soul mate just fades away?

As if attempting to rally to her side, the black-and-white Timer appears to darken more decisively, to strengthen, only to fade again. Kara can barely see it against her skin; perhaps, were her vision that of a human, she wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

 

Oh no…her other soul mate is a human.

 

Are they feeling this too?

 

Are they feeling something _worse_?

 

“Eliza, what’s happening?”

Eliza doesn’t speak, only holds her closer. Against the pounding of blood against her ears, Kara hears her sister’s key turning in the lock, hears her sister’s voice calling out for them, and she wants Alex beside her, holding her along with Eliza, _now_. Even though there’s no way that Alex could have heard her thoughts, she’s upstairs quickly enough, and when she spots her mother and sister huddled together on Kara’s bed she immediately joins in. “Kara, what’s wro—

 

Alex’s eyes land on Kara’s (still terrifyingly blank-to-the-human-eye) wrist, and Kara doesn’t think she’s seen her sister look so worried in a long while.

 

“T-they’ll be okay, Kara,” Alex says after a moment, squeezing Kara so tightly that Kara is almost certain it would hurt were she not practically invincible. For her part, she only manages a nod, squeezing her eyes shut against the lingering burning feeling that wraps around her wrist as she stays huddled in her family’s grip. It hurts markedly _less_ now, but the pain is still there, whispering against her skin, and Kara hates it. She doesn’t want to lose her soul mate—couldn’t bear to lose either of them, even though she doesn’t know them—but she doesn’t want to feel this way anymore either.

She just wants the pain to stop.

 

The fact that it does, and _right_ after she’d wished for it to, is either cause for concern, else one of the strangest—most awful—coincidences she has yet to face in her life.

 

“Oh, thank _Rao,_ ” she breathes when she looks down. The black-and-white Timer is still there, albeit a bit…different looking. Like there’s a darkness backing it; a darkness that hadn’t been there before. Kara knows that she should probably ask Eliza about that—she will later—but in all honesty, she’s just glad that her wrist has stopped hurting. “Did they…are they…”

“They’re alive, Kara,” Alex says, after shooting a quick glance at her mother. At Eliza’s confirming nod Alex says, this time with more confidence, “They’re alive.”

“I’ve…never been more scared…in my whole life,” Kara says, not knowing, until the words leave her mouth, that what she’s just said is true. Even when her planet had died, taking everything she’d ever known away from her, Kara hadn’t been _scared_ so much as lost. Angry. Sad.

 

But what had happened just now? That had been so very, very different.

 

Kara doesn’t _ever_ want to feel that way again.

 

“Unfortunately, sweetheart, we can’t _do_ very much about this. Even if they were…here,” says Eliza, taking one of Kara’s hands in her own, “we wouldn’t be able to speed things along, and we wouldn’t necessarily be able to help. Sometimes…sometimes people lose their soul mates.”

“But how is that _fair_ , Eliza?”

“It isn’t,” Alex says, jumping in when her mother flounders for words. “But it happens…though I doubt your soul mate will die before you get to meet.” When Kara turns to her sister, the older girl gently swipes a finger under her eyes, catching at half-shed tears. “Something tells me that whoever they are, they’re stronger than that.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Yeah. How else would they get to be matched up with somebody as brave and incredible as you, Kara?”

 

Kara doesn’t really remember what happens after that, even though the night’s meal consists of her favourite Earth foods—pizza, pot stickers, and ice cream. She’s mostly just scared senseless from the near-loss, and takes a few seconds of each passing minute to simply cradle her right wrist to her chest. Whoever it is on the other side of all this, they _can’t_ die. They can’t leave her too. She doesn’t know what she’d do if it came to that.

 

As it turns out, it’s all too possible for her to be hurt on Earth, contrary to her family’s studies, and the thought scares her more than she’d like to admit.

 

They try to watch a movie later, but Kara’s heart isn’t in it even though Eliza and Alex have elected to watch one of her favourites. She calls it a day early, and, unsurprisingly, they follow suit; after the soul mate scare she’d had today, she thinks that none of them feels quite up to a late-night.

 

Mere hours later, as she listens to Alex’s breathing even out in the even patterns of sleep, Kara tosses and turns, and though she knows that she cannot do anything about it, she stares at her Timers, eyes picking out the familiar colours in the dark of her and Alex’s room.

The green Timer is stable, almost eerily so; as if it can’t even tell that it’s partner had been in distress. It _does_ seem to glint a bit, which could mean anything, really. Of course, Kara knows that she’s just making things up in her head, that the Timers aren’t _meant_ to indicate anything other than the distance in time separating soul mates from each other, but still…

Abruptly, Kara’s mind changes track, and she wonders what happened to the soul mate she’d almost lost. She turns her attention to her right wrist, wondering if she can glean any answers from what she sees there. The black-and-white Timer looks _haunted_ now, and she can’t help but wonder if that might have something to do with whatever it was that had almost taken her soul mate from her.

 

Unbidden Kara’s thoughts turn to Jeremiah; she wonders what must it feel like for Eliza, who’d found her soul mate, only to lose him?

 

Kara lets herself wonder about that for the rest of the night, distracting herself with the idea of her adoptive mother’s pain so she can, even if only for the time being, pretend that she has not felt anything like it. Of course, in the morning, she is reminded of all that had happened only the day before, and try as she might, Kara cannot escape the fact that she had been hurt by her soul mate’s almost-death. She can only hope that nothing more will befall whoever is tied to the black-and-white Timer, and that the person tied to the green Timer stays as safe and stable as they always have until the day when they are meant to meet.

She’s not sure if she could handle another shock like that.

 

 

***

 

 

About a year later it happens again, the black-and-white Timer almost fading completely away, and though it hurts less this time, it frightens Kara worse than the first scare. She paces, agitated past the point of caring that she’s probably scaring Alex with the way her steps shake everything in their room just a little; even her sister’s presence does little to calm her as she watches the numbers struggling, struggling, struggling to return to their regular boldness against the inside of her wrist. What’s happening to them _?_

How does a person brush this closely with death _twice_ in the span of a year?

What kind of life is her soul mate living in that universe of theirs?

How is her other soul mate taking it?

What’s going to become of them?

 

Why did _she_ have to be born with this _human_ Timer, and why is it hurting her so much to think of two people she doesn’t know—to think of _losing_ one of them, though they have yet to meet?

 

“Didn’t your mom say that this is because of your great heart, Kara?”

At Alex’s words, Kara feels her body whip around just a bit too sharply, causing a mini-gust of wind to tousle her sister’s long locks. Thinking out loud has earned her more than her share of strange looks over the last few years, but this is the first time that Alex has answered her instead of just pointing it out. “She did, but _Alex_ , I’m not even human! I’m not _supposed_ to have to deal with this!”

“You’re dealing with it, Kara,” says Alex, says Kara’s big sister, and Kara deflates a little, slowing her pacing even though she’s still scared, still clutching her right wrist so tightly that she’s liable to break it off if she isn’t careful. “And I know it’s scary, and I know that you’re worried, but you can’t let yourself get crazy about this. Everything will work out…the way it’s meant to.”

 

Kara knows that Alex is purposefully avoiding saying that everything will turn out fine.

 

She spends the rest of the night cuddled up against her sister on the couch, glancing at her wrists every five seconds as if she’s afraid that her Timers will disappear. Alex doesn’t comment on the action, only squeezing Kara a little closer every time it happens. It is an uneasy peace, but Kara finds that her sister’s presence is soothing to the point where she can at least _pretend_ that she is not afraid.

They don’t mention what’s happened to Eliza; no need to worry her any more than they usually do. Kara knows that her adoptive mother has been trying her best to come up with answers, perhaps to even come up with a way to get Kara through to another universe, and she doesn’t want to put anything more on Eliza’s plate.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Years pass.

 

Kara wears the name “Kara Danvers” with pride (though she never forgets her roots).

Kara learns how to convince everyone that she’s human.

Kara graduates from high school and goes off to college.

 

Kara gets used to feeling a slight burn around her right wrist from time to time.

 

She figures that wherever her off-universe soul mate is doing, they’re possibly in a dangerous profession—how else could one explain how the black-and-white Timer seems to fade ever-so-slightly every now-and-again—and though she isn’t _happy_ about it, there’s also nothing that she can do. She’s glad that, at the very least, the changes are so slight and so short-lived that they’d be imperceptible to the human eye. Kara doesn’t know why, but she gets the feeling that her _other_ soul mate, the one already in the same universe, would most likely _not be impressed_ with how often the third of their trio seems to almost-die.

 

She wonders often, what things will be like when they are all together. Will they get along right away, or will it take a lot of time and trust? Will she feel like the heroines in the love stories that Alex watches with her, the stories she reads whenever she gets the chance? What will her soul mates be like?

That last question reminds Kara of all the long evenings on Krypton spent daydreaming about the people she was meant to be with; an unexpected remembrance that (surprisingly) doesn’t hurt her with how things used to be.

 

As the green Timer ticks, steadily forward, constant in comparison to its ever-looping black-and-white counterpart, Kara smiles, and revisits her old dreams.

 

 


	6. Sara: Ages 20 to 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara revises her relationship with Death...

Oliver Queen is _just_ hot enough to convince Sara that sleeping with him while he’s in a relationship with Laurel is not a Bad Thing™. That, and Sara’s had the biggest crush on him for what feels like forever. so really, she doesn’t take much convincing before she’s got her legs wrapped around his waist. Of course, she’s an adult, and she knows that what she’s doing with her sister’s boyfriend behind her sister’s back is fucked up on a level that says more about her than it does about anybody else, but Sara doesn’t care. It isn’t _love_ , not by a long-shot, but it’s the closest thing she’s got. At the rate things are going, love is never going to exist for her outside of her family, but Oliver…sometimes makes her feel like it could.

 

Besides, she and Laurel will come through this okay, because they’re sisters, so there’s no harm in a little bit of fun even if it’s with her sister’s boyfriend, right?

 

Though she’d never admit it, Sara knows that for Laurel, Oliver Queen may as well be _the one,_ no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. Sara’s not stupid, she’s seen the home design magazines, the real estate flyers with apartments and townhouses circled in bold red pen. Laurel wants to move in with Oliver. Oliver is freaked out and using Sara as a way to…who knows? Drive a wedge between himself and Laurel? Something along those lines. Sara knows, and yet she’s allowing it to happen. She doesn’t really know what it is that possesses her to get on Ollie’s father boat, but she does, and it very quickly becomes the one thing—even more than jeopardizing her relationship with Laurel for the sake of sleeping with a boy she has a crush on—that Sara Lance regrets above all else.

 

Except that that’s a lie.

 

She’s got one more regret.

 

Later, as she’s lying on top of something hard and cold and wet—she’s not even sure what it is—she stares at the numbers on her wrists and wonders how bad it is that she’d never gotten around to figuring out what they mean. She doesn’t know why, but she feels like she’s letting somebody down, and she’s about to apologize to the empty sky above her…until she notices a freighter nearby.

She calls out to it.

 

 

Sara’s terrified, beyond terrified, and she remains that way even when she’s been rescued, because for somebody who’s just been saved from certain death she certainly doesn’t feel safe. Everything is happening far too fast, and she’s nothing but a scared woman-child clad in nothing but lingerie, surrounded by scary men with large guns…until she’s not. Suddenly she’s in a locked room with a man who calls himself Dr. Anthony Ivo, and he’s promising her that he will keep her _safe_.

If she helps him.

If she becomes his _assistant_.

He explains a little bit about what he’s doing, and some part of her—the part that remembers what she’d been learning in college, remembers how she’d wanted to be a doctor—wonders if Dr. Ivo truly believes in this… _miracle_ serum; it all sounds suspect to her. Even so, she’s so desperate to feel safe that Sara—for all the bravado that she had been liable to use growing up—agrees right away. She becomes Dr. Ivo’s—Anthony’s—assistant, and instantly she feels…safer. Slightly.

Only slightly, because it very quickly becomes clear to her that Anthony is _not_ a particularly humanitarian individual. She’s very careful to hide her wrists around him, as much as she can, and when he eventually sees the numbers she manages to convince him—while tugging her sleeves down as far as they’ll go—that they’re just silly tattoos, the significance of which is solely between herself and the group of friends with whom she’d gotten them.

Just silly things that she wants to forget.

She’s banking on the fact that Anthony couldn’t possibly know that Sara Lance hadn’t had a group of female friends with whom to get silly, permanent, personally significant tattoos and luckily, he never asks questions about them again.

The “work” that Anthony does is disturbing, to be sure, but Sara can’t help the gratitude that pours into her whenever he praises her, or feeds her, or otherwise shows her a kindness. It’s sick. It’s perverse. But this is her life for the indeterminate future, and while Sara feels her stomach protest every time she assists her captor/saviour with a new experiment, she must admit, even if only to herself, that she would rather be an instrument than a test subject. At least, this way, the mercenaries aboard the Amazo have no choice but to leave her alone.

She develops a heartlessness during her time with Anthony, and Sara realizes that the darkness inside of her is serving a purpose outside of just making her _appear_ tougher. Every prisoner that she helps torture, every blow she lands on a starving, scared soul; it’s changing her, and while she doesn’t like it, Sara keeps on going. It’s the only way she’s going to survive. She has no choice if she wants to survive.

 

 

 

When Oliver Queen is brought aboard the freighter a year later, Sara is ashamed.

 

 

 

Not because he judges her—no, he’s too confused to do that—but because she’d never thought about him until this point. She’d only ever thought of herself; of keeping herself alive. Not once had she wondered what had become of him, this young man (because he’s no longer a boy) that she once thought she might have loved. She feels guilty even so much as _looking_ at him, but still she follows Anthony’s orders.

Until she doesn’t.

Until Oliver pulls her along with him and Shado—beautiful Shado—and Slade—powerful, pained Slade—as they dart through the trees towards somewhere else. Once again, everything happens quickly, almost too quickly for Sara to really think about it. They find the Mirakuru, which, to her surprise, is real. They use it on Slade, who’s dying anyway, and Sara—for all that she’s known Oliver’s island friends for less than a full day—feels badly for the man as trails of blood leak from his eyes.

 

He dies.

Anthony finds them.

Anthony is about to shoot her but Oliver doesn’t let him.

Shado dies instead.

Slade appears and Slade is different.

Not human.

 

Sara has never been more scared in her life, and Oliver…she doesn’t even know what to say. He’s changed. _Different_. He’s no longer the carefree party-boy that she’d known back home in Starling. That’s a good thing, she reminds herself as she and Slade and Oliver settle in for an uneasy rest. She’s changed too, different; a shadow of the girl who’d gotten onto the Queen’s Gambit with Oliver behind her big sister’s back. The only thing that’s stayed—relatively—the same about her is…the numbers on her wrists. The way that they sort of tickle, sort of itch.

Like she’s supposed to have figured them out by now.

“Not like I’m sitting on a ton of free time here,” she mutters to herself.

 

Things only get crazier after that.

 

Every moment blurs into the next, and Sara doesn’t have time to think about what she’s doing or saying; everything that she is, is action and reaction, even though there are parts of it where she’s standing still. She’d never thought that she’d experience anything outside of a couple of fistfights, and, at most, _maybe_ a knife-fight involving one of the delinquent boys she’d fooled around with. Possibly a gunfight or two due to her father’s line of work and the deterioration of Starling City that she’d noticed before stepping aboard the Queen’s Gambit. But this? This is unlike anything that she could ever have imagined herself getting involved in. And it’s terrifying, but a part of Sara knows that she will do _anything_ to survive. To get home. She can only hope that Oliver is ready to do the same thing.

 

What happens instead, is that Slade captures Oliver.

He radios her and asks for a prisoner exchange.

She and Anatoly strap a bomb to a half-conscious Henrik.

Slade discovers their plans and leaves them to die.

Anthony tells them about a cure.

Oliver comes up with a plan.

 

Sara watches a dying man’s final sacrifice. Oliver comes up with another plan, showing off more intelligence in the span of fifteen minutes than she ever remembers seeing from him in the years of their childhood. Everything is moving too fast, and it’s too much, and Sara doesn’t quite know what’s happening until Slade and Oliver are fighting each other on the Amazo, and it’s sinking, sinking just like the Queen’s Gambit. Anatoly, at least, will get home—at least, she hopes he will. Somebody should get home after all the sacrifices they’ve made. As for her, well—the sound her body makes as the current rips her out of the ship is more familiar than she’d care to admit.

The silence after it…

That too, she knows all too well.

 

 

At some point, she thinks she sees somebody, somebody strong and swathed in black and red, a hood and a scarf obscuring their features. Sara isn’t sure. The fight to live has been lost, as far as she’s concerned, so whatever this stranger plans to do…she won’t fight it.

 

She can’t.

 

 

 

Later—though she cannot be sure _how much later_ —it is the faint burning against her wrists that tells her that she’s still alive.

That, and the feeling of something soft and sturdy underneath her head.

A pillow?

 

“It is good that you have achieved consciousness. Your body is resilient, but very weak still. Had I found you any later, I fear you would not be alive now.” It’s a woman’s voice that says it, low and accented and powerful. Sara grins to herself, not knowing why she would do such a thing. Powerful means dangerous, or at least it should, and she has no reason to smile in the face of potential danger. “No, do not rise. You do not yet possess the strength.” Sara doesn’t realize that she’s lifted herself slightly off the—what is it—the _mattress_ upon which she has been placed until a firm, but gentle hand pushes her back down. She looks up, following the hand to a wrist, then an arm, then a shoulder, until her gaze brings her face to face with a woman.

A beautiful woman.

A _very_ beautiful woman garbed in black and red.

_The stranger from the island._

Sara can’t help her curiosity; the questions come rushing out. “Where am I? How did I get here? How long have I been here? What are you going to do to me? What happened to me?” She knows that at least part of the answer to the last question—she’d almost died, almost drowned again—but it can’t hurt to ask. After all, she certainly doesn’t remember being anywhere near a comfortable mattress or a woman who looks like this; she doesn’t think she’s ever _seen_ a woman like this, all dark hair and dark eyes and strong cheekbones dusted with freckles like Sara’s own. Posture that’s a little too rigid to be regal; a little too guarded to be the product of “good breeding” alone.

The woman does not smile, but there’s a kindness in her eyes—hidden behind layers upon layers of…something else. Something that intrigues Sara. That makes her feel safe.

Sara watches the woman turn, reaching for something, before placing a bowl in her hands. Their fingers touch, the contact pleasant and present until the woman is sure that Sara’s grip on the bowl is firm, and then she says, “Before any questions are answered, you would do well to drink this.” Sara lifts the bowl to her lips, not taking a sip as she inspects the clear liquid, sniffing it gently. It _looks_ like it’s just a simple broth, but she knows that she should be careful. Anthony might have been an awful man, but he had taught her a great many things—amongst those, the skills needed to recognize the scents of various poisonous elements. “You are cautious; a commendable quality, though in this case your caution is unnecessary. I will do you no harm.”

Sara looks up into the woman’s eyes again, looking for a sign. She’s always been good at reading other people, could always tell when they meant her harm or not, but she’s not getting any sort of vibe from this woman outside of a kindness that seems…restrained, but almost overflowing in nature. Whoever she is, she seems complex. Sara takes a sip before smiling—though she really has _nothing_ to smile about (aside from the pretty face in front of her)—and she looks up at the woman in thought, considering her saviour from underneath her eyelashes. She can’t very well keep on calling this stranger (her saviour, her mind repeats) by such an impersonal epithet. “May I at least know your name?”

The woman watches her out of her dark, kind eyes, and Sara takes another sip of the plain broth. “I am Nyssa.”

Sara waits for something else, anything else, but Nyssa does not seem to have anything else to say, and Sara is in no rush to annoy the person who’d saved her life. Instead, she takes another sip from the bowl, then smiles a little wider. “My name is Sara Lance. Thank you for saving my life, Nyssa.”

 

To Sara’s surprise, Nyssa ducks her head, looking _embarrassed_ , of all things, and Sara wonders if the other woman isn’t used to being thanked.

 

“A small matter.”

“No, I mean it,” Sara says, balancing her bowl of broth in one hand before reaching for one of Nyssa’s with the other. The woman looks like she might pull her hand away, but she doesn’t. She seems confused by the contact until Sara gives the hand underneath hers a squeeze. “You saved my life and brought me to…wherever this is…and you’re taking care of me. I’m very grateful.”

A voice calls out from someplace close by, and Nyssa answers in a language that Sara doesn’t recognize, rising from her seat at Sara’s side in a graceful motion.

“In time, you may hate that I have brought you here, Sara Lance, but for now finish the broth, and then return to slumber. Your body needs as much rest as possible. I will return in a few hours, and I should hope that you will be yet asleep at that time.”

There’s something in the other woman’s voice—a gentle, but present warning—and she resolves to do as she’s told without batting an eye. She’s in no position to act out, and without any idea of where she is and who it is that’s taken her in and sheltered her from death, she had best follow all instructions given to her. It feels a bit threatening, in a way, like how it had felt when she’d been helping Anthony—Dr. Ivo—torture his “patients”.

Listen, or else.

Obey, or face the (unnamed, but implied) consequences.

“Okay, Nyssa, I will.”

Nyssa shoots her a small, shy smile as she leaves, black-and-red robes—where _are_ they for her to be dressed like that—swirling behind her as she walks. After it becomes clear that her saviour really won’t be coming back for a while, Sara finishes her broth and leans back against the pillows, revelling in their softness. There’s a faint aching all over her body, and her wrists are so _damned_ itchy that she wants to rip the skin off, but other than that she feels…good. Alive. Comfortable. At least for now. The room Nyssa has put her in is well-appointed, if a little strange; there’s a lot of red and gold in the decoration, a lot of heavy wood, and no electricity as far as Sara can see.

Strange place.

 

She knows that she should be on her guard, but she’s missed the feeling of a real bed.

 

Sara is sound asleep a few hours later when Nyssa returns to wake her with a bowl of broth, a half-loaf of bread, and a jug of water. “Thank you,” she says as the other woman perches on the chair by Sara’s bed, dark eyes watching her carefully—cautiously?—as she sips at the broth, dipping the bread into its warmth to soften the firm crust.

“You have expressed your gratitude to me once already, Sara Lance,” Nyssa replies, but she wears a shadow of a smile behind her serious tone, and Sara can’t help but want to smile back.

She does.

“Doesn’t matter if I do it once, or twice, or even a hundred times. It wouldn’t be enough. You saved my life, Nyssa. How did you even find me?”

Nyssa looks away a moment, and when she turns back, there is a focus in her eyes that Sara has never seen on anybody before. An intensity that she’s seen rivalled only by Oliver—and not the party-boy Oliver, but the haunted young man Sara had seen him become on Lian Yu. “My father sent me there for his… _business_ …but I found you, and could not abandon you, and so I brought you home.”

“And are now nursing me back to health,” Sara adds, not missing the way that Nyssa’s cheeks seem to colour a bit at that. “Also, I’ve eaten now, and I’m eating again, so…would it be okay if you answered some questions? Namely, where am I? And what happens to me now?”

“You are in a room here in my home, a place called Nanda Parbat,” Nyssa says slowly, and a sense of foreboding creeps up on Sara for reasons of which she is not entirely certain. “And before I tell you what is to become of you, I must apologize.”

“For what?” Sara asks.

“I have told you that my name is Nyssa, and that is the truth. What I have not told you, however, is that I am Nyssa, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. Heir to the Demon. And Nanda Parbat, my home, is home to the League of Assassins.”

Sara clenches the bowl so tightly in her hand that were she stronger, she might have hurt herself. “W-what?” She doesn’t know anything about this League of Assassins aside from that she should be scared, but she can’t bring herself to feel that way when Nyssa is watching her almost as if _she’s_ the one who’s scared. Scared of what, Sara can’t even guess. “Am I…safe here?”

At Nyssa’s nod—sure and swift—she relaxes her hand, lifting the bowl to her lips for a long, thoughtful sip.

Nyssa seems to relax a bit. “For the time being, you need only focus on regaining your strength. My father will not turn you away so long as you require more time to recover. If you are discomfited, however, I will arrange for you to be brought to the mainland, where you might make your own way back to wherever it is that you call home.”

 

Sara weighs her options but the choice, she thinks, is clear.

 

“Then, if it’s really okay...I think I’ll stay.”

Nyssa nods quickly, and Sara sees a hint of the woman’s smile playing at her lips. “As you will. In that case, I implore you to consider me your caretaker for the time being; as it was I who brought you here, it is I who must take full responsibility for your convalescence. Should you have need of anything, you need only ask me.”

“Okay, Nyssa, I will.”

Nyssa shoots her a smile again, and Sara smiles back.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

It takes her a few months to heal, and Nyssa is at her side regardless of the time of day. All Sara needs to do is call. The other woman’s compassion is immeasurable, and Sara wonders how it is that a woman who, as Nyssa herself says, has been born and bred to kill, could be so kind and gentle. Sara, no longer the bratty, selfish young woman she’d once been, can see that despite what Nyssa says about the darkness of her soul, she is of a good heart; when she brings it up, Nyssa only smiles.

 

When she has fully recovered, Sara decides to stay; not only because she fears that there is nothing waiting for her in Starling, but because she feels that staying is the only way to thank Nyssa for the compassion she has shown.

 

She pledges herself to the League, though she promises, at least to herself, that she will never renounce her old life; will never renounce her family or her friends or the city she’d once called home. When she is told to choose a new name for herself, she thinks, surprisingly, of Tweety, and she asks that she be called “Ta-er al-Sahfer”. It is perhaps a bit heavy-handed, but the name means “Yellow Bird”; with a bit of creativity applied, it means “Canary”. Sara thinks it’s fitting (and yet one more way in which she defies the wishes of the almighty Ra’s al Ghul.

Sara—though she is careful to respond only to Ta-er al-Sahfer amongst her new “brothers and sisters”—trains under Al-Owal with the other initiates; among them, an Asian man who has renamed himself “Sarab”. Later, she asks Nyssa what the name means, during the Arabic lessons that have become part and parcel with an evening in Nyssa’s company.

“It means _mirage_.”

The next time the initiates spar, Sara is paired with Sarab, and in his eyes, she sees the look of a man who is not what he once was; a haunted man. A shell of a man. A mirage, indeed.

 

 

 

She wonders if she carries that same look in her own eyes, but there is no one to ask.

 

 

 

Sara becomes strong.

Stronger than she’d ever been before.

Even Ra’s al Ghul—Sara knows that he dislikes her—is impressed with her strength. They don’t know what drives her; not even Nyssa knows. Sara isn’t even sure if _she_ knows what it is; she only knows that she will do whatever she can to survive, and with the strength that the League is showing her she can wield, she has no question that she will survive. Sara is no longer afraid of death; now, she worries only for what she is becoming

Still, she clings to the sweet memories of her early life. She clings to the faded faces of her mother, her father, her sister. Of Tommy Merlyn. Of little Thea Queen. Of Oliver. She clings to the delinquent boys with whom she’d spent her teen years, to the self-defence classes with her sister and the baseball games with her father. Hell, she clings even to the memories of all those nights spent cradling her wrists against her chest, wondering what she might have done to deserve such strange marks; what she’d done for the universe to deem her unworthy of a soul mate; she rarely looks at the numbers now, though the faint itching against her wrists never leaves. The only reason she ever spares them a second glance some nights is because they are something from home.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

A year passes, and Sara is different from the girl who’d been found half-dead on the shores of Lian Yu. Now she is Ta-er al-Sahfer, a respected warrior, and she has seen death, and delivered death, and laughed in the face of the Demon’s Head.

 

Still, Sara clings to her old name—her _true_ name—and it is the name that falls from Nyssa’s lips when ultimately, _inevitably_ , they come together. It is the name that the Heir to the Demon whispers against her skin, the name that is followed by Nyssa’s gasps and moans; the soft sounds that proclaim to the quiet of Nyssa’s chambers that Sara is her beloved. Sara relishes the chorus of her name on Nyssa’s lips, relishes the opportunity to have so strong a woman writhing and _helpless_ beneath her.

In Nyssa’s bed, in Nyssa’s arms, Sara feels loved.

Safe.

Her wrists burn sometimes, but Sara ignores the pain. Nyssa sees the numbers, but she does not ask what they could mean. Rather, she offers Sara comfort, explains how she, too, pays little mind to Dreams—explains, when asked, how the League forces its members to swear an oath forsaking their soul’s mate—and Sara chooses not to dwell on soul mates and destiny and what is supposedly _meant to be_. Instead she focuses on Nyssa, and her training, and on her duties to the League. Sara falls deeply, falls truly, and the love that Nyssa returns is fiercely loyal, comprised of a devotion of almost impossible strength. A sincerity of unparalleled proportions.

 

And yet.

Something is missing.

 

Sara does not know what, but there is something not quite right, and as much as she loves Nyssa, she fears that their time together will come to an end much sooner than either of them could wish. The days, the weeks, the months, the _years_ pass in love, and comfort, and death, and darkness, and Sara is not the girl she was, nor the young woman she once thought she’d be. She is at once both more and less, and she does not know how that could ever be possible.

News of the Starling City vigilante reaches her; a man in a green hood, who kills with a bow and an arrow. Sara knows at once who he is. It’s Oliver, he’s _alive_ , and Sara…Sara wants to go home. Not for him—though she wants to know, _needs_ to know what happened to him…after—but for the family she loves.

 

Though she loves Nyssa, she does not feel right anymore.

 

When Malcolm Merlyn’s Undertaking rips through the Glades, she worries. Perhaps sensing her unbalanced state of mind, Ra’s al Ghul sends her on a mission (hoping, perhaps, that she will not return). Nyssa fusses over Sara as she prepares for the journey, pursing her lips in the way that makes her look so much _cuter_ than an international assassin should rightly look. “You will complete your mission and then return safely to me, Beloved.”

“Okay, Nyssa, I will,” she says, and it breaks her heart a little that she must lie to the woman who has loved her so well, but she has to leave.

 

She can’t stay.

She doesn’t know if she can leave.

She _must_ leave.

 

That night, Sara’s wrists itch, and for some reason, Sara’s mind clears. There is no room for doubt, no room for hesitation. She knows what she must do.

 

 

 

By the next morning, she is gone, and though she regrets not giving Nyssa the closure of a final goodbye, she does not look back.

 

Starling City is waiting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, hope this was okay! Just wanted to point out that this is the last Sara chapter that will include her age in the title (small thing, but it's important...maybe just to me, but shh).  
> Also, I got a job! And training starts next Monday...which means that my new, as-of-yet-undetermined life schedule _may_ or _may not_ affect how often I get to write, at least until I'm used to it.  
>  I'll still try for two weeks between updates at the latest, but here's an advance-apology, in case I'm late!  
> Thanks everyone!


	7. Lena: Ages 27 to 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena feels freedom and loss and monotony all in the span of a single year...

Her father is dead, her brother imprisoned, and her mother has fled from their home and run off to who-knows-where. Despite this, and the fact that the Luthor money is the only thing that she has left of her family, Lena has never felt…better. Never felt more in control of her life than she does right now. If she had known that things would end up this way, why, she might have hoped for something like this sooner…

But that’s not true.

She doesn’t _quite_ mean that.

Not in a cruel way, at least; because some part of her, some small, _stupid_ part of her, will always love her family. They may not have been the best—and Lillian was certainly never much of a mother, in Lena’s case—but they had been good to her, for a time. There had been love between herself and her father, and love between herself and Lex. Even between herself and her mother, there had existed, at the very least, a desire to defend their shared family name…and now?

 Now there is nothing to remind her of the days before Superman, before her father’s death, before Lex. Before wearing the name Luthor meant something other than that she was the only sister of an alien-hating war-freak with severe issues hidden underneath a god-complex and far more money than sense. Or something like that; she’s not quite sure what the tabloids are calling her brother now.

The beginning of the year is stressful, and before March is through Lena has moved completely off her family’s estate. There are whispers from some of the staff who had favoured her, whispers saying that Lillian occasionally returns to the manor. She doesn’t much care what her mother does, if she’s honest, but she accepts the occasional phone call. Lillian will lose interest in her soon enough. For all that she’s preaching on the values of “family loyalty” and such, she doesn’t want Lena around.

And that’s fine.

Really.

Through it all, Lena keeps her head down, funnelling money into an offshore account the way that Lionel had once advised her to do. She’s not necessarily afraid that her family’s company will go bankrupt—there are far too many corrupt powers at work who want the technology that Lex has promised to his fellow xenophobes—but she thinks, as far as contingencies go, that it would be better to be as prepared as humanly possible. Besides, as a Luthor, the money is as much hers as it is Lillian’s, or Lionel’s, or Lex’s. She’s as entitled to it as any of them, and since _she’s_ not planning on using that money to hunt aliens, she figures she deserves to indulge herself a little.

With everything else going on, she figures that she deserves that much, at least.

 

There’s also the time limit that Lena has imposed on herself.

 

It’s a small thing, really, but she’s decided that she’d best get her life sorted out before she meets the first of her soulmates. Since she imagines that it might not be some time before her off-world soul mate makes it to them—though she’s doing _everything in her power_ to try to get them to meet sooner rather than later—her meeting with the alien part of their little triad has only been on Earth for…well, a little under ten years or so, at this point. While she’s almost absolutely certain that they’ve managed to end up in a loving home, there will still be things that they might not know, or might not still be comfortable with, and Lena wants to be ready to handle that; wants to be ready to handle any questions, any freak-outs, anything at all.

At this rate, she’s only got about three years to sort everything out, and everything is a mess. Here she is, Lena, with an educational history that would put many a scholar to shame, and countless ideas in her head, and so much _talent_ that she’d had an easy enough time looking for partners to work with her on her various personal endeavours, but she can’t honestly say that she’s anywhere close to being her best self. She can’t say, with confidence, that this is the version of herself that she wants to be for the rest of her life. Her patterns of behaviour are haphazard, and she knows that she doesn’t take as good care of herself as she should—unsurprising given how much fretting she does over her work and her theories and her two soul mates, one of whom seems dead set on giving her a heart attack every once in a while.

Point is, Lena thinks as she mulls over a theorem she’s working with for the _nth_ time, she has to start getting herself organized, because somehow, in some way, she doubts that either of her soul mates is going to be the dependable, steady one (at least, not right away, as those roles might shift and grow with time). She doesn’t want the first impression she makes to be one of complete and utter unreliability, but one of trustworthiness and comfort. Especially for whoever it is who’d come to Earth only ten years or so ago; who knows what kind of place he or she or they might have come from? She wants her soul mate—who seems to be doing well, no major injuries or accidents unlike a certain _other_ soul mate of hers—to feel comfortable with her. To feel like Lena can be relied upon. Trusted.

It would be a new experience for Lena, being trusted.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

The phone calls start about a week into September.

She’s been avoiding all of Lex’s calls, though he’s never stopped trying to contact her. She doesn’t know why he feels the need, but she doesn’t want to question anything, either. He’d stopped calling after their last conversation, after she’d tried, for the _nth_ time, to convince him not to chase after Superman anymore. She regrets her harshness, of course, but she’d meant every word she’d said, and from the look in Lex’s eyes he had understood that. That’s part of the reason why she wonders why he would try again, after all this time. Lena does her best to move past it, tries to ignore the constant ringing, tries to put down more groundwork on her various personal projects. Tries to move on with her life.

If she could just figure out a way to centre herself again, everything would be fine.

She’d be able to leave this behind her.

 

That seems almost impossible when, about two weeks after the calls start, they stop, only to be replaced with a knock at her door. It’s morning, a bit past ten; not early enough to be a courier, not late enough to be a friend (not that Lena has many of those, though the ones she does have would call first anyway). She’s just sitting on the comfy sofa in her Metropolis condo reading a book when it happens—it’s the first time she’d had any free time to just _be_ —and so she looks completely unprofessional when she opens the door to the Luthor family’s lawyer (or at least, one of the many who bear that title). Thankfully she’s comfortable with the woman, who’s honestly the least awful of all Lillian’s legal team, and so she motions to the one staff member she has in her personal employ—an old hand from her days in the Luthor mansion—and gets some tea going while she excuses herself to change into something a bit more…professional. Thankfully, the lawyer—whose name, she’s horrified to find, she does not remember—seems too interested with the paintings on her walls and the flowers on her table to be bothered by the wait.

“I’m sorry for this,” she says all the same as she joins the lawyer on the sofa. “What can I do for you today?” It can’t be about money and it can’t be about her mother, which would only leave Lex…except that Lena doesn’t have the faintest idea why he would need to speak with her so urgently that he would involve one of their lawyers.

“I’ve come today because you’ve been avoiding my calls, Ms. Luthor,” the older woman says, and Lena has the decency to look sheepish; to be honest, she hadn’t been sure if the calls had been coming from Lex, but she’d not wanted to check. If she had, this might not have been happening…but honestly, she’s not sorry so much as just embarrassed. Isn’t she supposed to be an adult? Isn’t facing their problems head on what adults are supposed to do?

“I’m terribly sorry about that,” she says, even if she doesn’t necessarily mean it. “I’ve just been unable, and admittedly unwilling, to speak to my brother.”

“It’s quite alright, Ms. Luthor, I understand.” From the tone of the other woman’s voice, she really does understand, and so Lena only puts on her most gracious smile and waits. “The matter I’ve come to discuss with you today, however, has little to do with your brother, at least in the sense that it is not about him so much as his former property. It is rather a matter of what to do with LuthorCorp.”

“My father’s company.”

“Indeed. However, on a legal note, it is your brother’s company,” says the lawyer, rummaging through her briefcase. “Though now…well, perhaps I should just let you read this for yourself. Here.”

Lena takes the proffered papers, smile dimming slightly. What could this be now? What more could the Luthors need from her? After a minute the question in her head is answered. “Are you sure that this is right?” Her brother is giving her the company. Her. Not Lillian. Not one of his trusted advisors or members of the board. Lena.

“Of course, Ms. Luthor. I spoke with Mr. Luthor this morning, and he is adamant that present circumstances change nothing.”

“Then…”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor,” says the lawyer, and her smile is more sympathetic than congratulatory when she says, “Should you wish it, you are now the CEO of LuthorCorp, effective as soon as the paperwork gets through.”

It isn’t often that Lena forgets the proper manners that Lillian had had drilled into her as a young girl, but Lena is almost certain that her mouth is currently open in a most uncouth expression. She’s been under the impression that Lex wanted nothing to do with her after she blatantly ignored him for months on end. “What happens if I decline?” She’s not sure that she _will_ decline, but Lena likes to cover all her bases. Call it a paranoid trait, call it the fact that her upbringing had required constant looking over her own shoulder, but she’d prefer to know the variables before risking everything for the sake of a dying company.

“Mr. Luthor said that you might ask that,” says the lawyer, and her sympathetic smile has yet to fade. “If you should so choose, all stocks and shares in your name will be…”

The lawyer trails off, delving into the finer details of things with a thoroughness that Lena can appreciate. She listens carefully, all while wondering if this would be best. She could just give it up. She could leave the company to the shareholders who want it (and its tech) so badly. She could move away, could wash her hands of this whole Luthor business.

She could be free.

And not just _sort of_ free or _mostly_ free, but _free._

 

Lena asks for some time to her thoughts, to mull over her options.

 

The lawyer is gracious about it, and is kind enough to remind her that whatever decision she makes, what matters most is that she is pleased with it. Followed up shortly afterwards with “I know you’ll do what’s best, Ms. Luthor.” Lena knows that the kindness is a bit of a platitude—that her decision does, in fact, matter in a way that she cannot simply do what she thinks would best please her—but she smiles and thanks the woman and promises to call as soon as possible. And then she’s alone again. The book she’d been reading does a poor job of holding her interest, and her tea is cold. She sighs.

 

So much for a relaxing day to herself.

 

Lena heads into her room to change back into her comfortable clothes, but the urge to do _anything_ is just…gone. She manages to get out of her blazer and hang it properly before giving up utterly on putting things in their place. Even after she’s gotten back into a soft hoodie and a pair of sweats from her second (third?) school, she’s just too tired to want to do anything.  

Her bed looks soft. She lies down (a more accurate term might be “flops”, but a Luthor _never_ “flops”) and sighs again, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. She’d always known that it was possible, strictly speaking, that the company might one day fall to her—if only because the Luthors are notoriously suspicious of outsiders—but to think that it should happen now…the timing is inconvenient, at best.

She removes her hands from in front of her face and rolls onto her back, wrists hovering in the air above her eyes. For a second, Lena just stares. It’s a comfort, staring at the two things in the world that mean more to her than anything—though she suspects that the affection she feels for the numbers is in part because of what she hopes for the people they belong to—and, as she has taken to doing so much since she was a girl, she starts to talk. To her Timers. As if it were not the Timers at all, but their owners, here, in her home, in her room.

As if they were all there lying side by side by side, sharing little things about how their days went; about the nice barista at the coffee shop who snuck one of them a free cookie; about one of their meetings gone slightly awry through the fault of nobody except for the one person who hadn’t even been supposed to be there; about the person who decided to flirt with one of them only to frantically apologize when they realized that they were trying to pick-up a person who’d already solidified their Bond. Little things like that. 

Lena never asks the Timers questions, because she knows that they would never answer. Instead, she runs her thoughts by the ever-changing strings of numbers, feeling, at least a little, as if her soul mates are there, listening to her. “I just don’t know what to do.” The black-and-white Timer, still shadowed, but much stronger than it had been since the first incident, seems to wink at her. She laughs. The red-and-blue Timer, the one with less than three years on its countdown, is steady, as if waiting. Listening. Lena drops her arms to her sides, staring up at the ceiling above her bed.

She doesn’t need to see the numbers to direct her focus, and she talks just for the sake of getting all her thoughts out into the open. “I know that I’ll have a long way to go if I want to get out from under the oppression of my name. I know that I have a chance to do that if I take on the company…but then I’ll have to put a lot of things on hold. It’s not like I can just continue on as I have, dedicating every bit of my life to the multiverse theory and all of my experiments and tests. I wouldn’t be able to do _just_ that, possibly ever again...and I want to do that. To find you.”

She thinks that, if her soul mates were here, they’d be able to get to the point where they could figure out what one of them meant by “you” after only a short time together. Lena doesn’t know why, but she’s got the feeling her soul mates are both particularly clever people (much like she is, though hopefully with happier memories than the ones she carries around like a ball and chain). They’d be able to sort out, through tone alone, when Lena meant “you” for one of them specifically, or when she meant “you” for them both. They’d all be able to do that for each other.

They _will_ be able to do that for each other, one day, but that day is not today. No, that day is farther into the future than she wants to admit it will most likely be, but it’s coming. She must remind herself of that, so that she doesn’t sink into despair. Not that that happens often anymore; living on her own, even if she’s living in Metropolis, where everybody and their mother is more liable than not to think that she’s exactly like Lex and Lillian.

 

Today, Lena has to make a decision, but she’s just so tired and her calm mood is shattered and she really has no idea what to do.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

To her surprise, the lawyer does not rush her, and what started out as a day to think turns into two, turns into three, turns into weeks. Lena isn’t sure that she would have even come to a decision so soon if…if it hadn’t happened.

 

The "it" in question being the single most awful thing to happen to Lena in her entire life.

 

It’s early in October, but late in the day. Morning, really, but the quietest hours of it. She doesn’t know why she’s awake, really, except that she does because she’s awake because of how loud her thoughts are. It shouldn’t be this difficult, she thinks. In fact, the decision before her should be clear. She has a chance to try to redeem the Luthor name, and she has a chance to do it while also turning her family’s company into a company for the good of the world, and not the good of only a few.

“What do I do?” she whispers to her Timers. She’s sitting at the desk in her apartment-study, staring at spreadsheets and graphs and reports and trying to figure out if this kind of life is what she wants. She doesn’t mind the paperwork, she knows. That isn’t what’s holding her back.

If Lena’s honest, there’s only one thing that’s holding her back.

It’s the city.

It’s Metropolis.

She doesn’t know how she can be expected to stay in Metropolis, to put down roots here, when her whole life she has tried and tried to separate herself from this place. Her name, her face, everything about her is under scrutiny from the people of this city. Lena knows that in accepting the company, she’d be putting an even bigger target on her own back, and while she’s not so scared as some might assume, it isn’t as if she has a death wish, either. Mostly she just wants to make it to her soul mates, at this point.

Still, she wants to help people, and if she could use her family’s company to do that then maybe people would see that being a Luthor doesn’t automatically make a person evil. Lena could be the proof, the Good Luthor™, the one who single-handedly saved the city and her company’s—her family’s—reputation.

 

 

Is that what she wants?

 

Lena’s about to stand up—she’s been sitting for far too long—when the pain begins. It’s her left wrist again, much worse than it had been the first time. No. It can’t be. God, no, please. The feeling is different, not the burning she had experienced five years ago, but an overtaking of numbness across her hand. It feels like Death, efficient and certain and spreading so quickly that she barely has time to register the feeling as it moves through her.

Soon it’s spread to her arm.

She feels the numbness grab for her heart, feels it squeeze with cold hands.

She’s breathless, she wants to scream, she can’t breathe.

It’s over in minutes, and the numbness leaves her so quickly that she’s only too aware of how empty she feels once it’s over. Hollow. As if there’s a part of her missing, a part of her that won’t be coming back any time soon, if ever.

 

Lena knows what’s happened—how could she not—and she’s crying long before she manages to look down at her wrist. This had always been a possibility. After the first time, she’d tried her best to prepare herself. She’d told herself that she might never meet the match for the black-and-white Timer, that the odds of finding this person were so low that it would be better not to hope.

She’s always held on to hope.

She’s always thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, that they would all be together.

She wasn’t expecting this, no matter how much she says she’s prepared.

 

Lena looks down at her wrist, and the bareness of it rushes up to greet her. She’s not quite sure what happens, but somehow, she makes it to her room, throws herself on her bed. She doesn’t cry, to her surprise, but she doesn’t move, either. She just lays there, on her stomach, half-suffocated with her face buried against the covers. Her housekeeper is worried, and comes in to check on her, but she waves off the concerns, eventually dismissing the good woman for the day.

Once she is alone, Lena rolls over, onto her back, and lifts her left wrist to her eyes. It’s still blank. As if nothing had ever been there. If she looks hard enough, she thinks that she can see a faint trace of black and white, but it is so pale, so barely-there that she can only see it for a second before she feels her eyes crossing. She knows that she should be getting some paperwork done, that she should be making a big decision about her life and her family’s company and her future. But she can’t focus. She can’t think. If she didn’t know what she wants to do a few minutes ago, she’s got even less of an idea of what to do now. Everything is pointless. There is no point to anything. Lena has no direction.

Just as she had when she was a kid, she now feels as though she’s missing out on something; only this time, instead of a happy childhood with a loving family, she’s missing out on a future; or at least on half of it—it takes almost too much effort to think of her other soul mate, the one she’ll be meeting in a few short years, but she reminds herself that for them, at least, she must be strong. They’ll be suffering right about now, just as she is.

 

Lena wonders how she could feel so lost, losing someone that she’d never gotten the chance to meet.

 

Her soul mate…her soul mate is gone.

 

Gone.

_Gone._

GONE.

_GONE._

Dead.

 

The lawyer calls, asking her for an answer, and Lena gives up, gives in, gives the answer that she knows what everybody is expecting, what everybody wants from her. She may as well give in.

 

 

 

One of her soul mates is dead.

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

She hates Metropolis, and it’s irrational, but Lena knows why.

 

A little over a year ago, her soul mate died, and while she doesn’t know where they were in the world—or where in the multiverse, perhaps, to be more accurate—she knows that she was here. In Metropolis. And now, because of that, because everything had happened so fast after her soul mate’s death, she’s still _here_. In Metropolis. Running her family’s company with a board of directors who won’t let her do what she wants, investors who want what she refuses to give, and a staff that is both delighted and terrified that aside from her intellect, she is

nothing

like

Lex.

“Ms. Luthor?”

Lena smiles at the doorway; her secretary is young and eager to succeed, afraid of making mistakes, and her earnestness reminds Lena of herself before…well, before. “Yes, Jess?”

“It’s past 9, and you asked me to remind you to go home if you stayed this late.”

Lena’s eyes drift to her computer’s clock, and she nods. It’s 9:20; poor Jess had probably only just worked up the nerve to tell her it’s time to go home. Lena powers down her computer for the night, packs away a few folders that she’s going to be taking home, and stands. She still feels like she could work, but she doesn’t think it fair to Jess to keep her here any longer, and yet she knows that the other woman won’t be comfortable going home if she doesn’t as well. “Thank you, Jess. Let’s go.”

Jess leads the way, Lena following close behind, and they exchange a few pleasantries and well-wishes for the weekend before parting ways; Lena to her car, Jess to the nearest subway stop. Lena offers a ride that she knows Jess won’t accept, and Jess tells her not to work over the weekend, though she knows Lena won’t listen. It’s only a few months old, but Lena likes the routine; it’s probably one of the only bearable things in her life right now aside from how the red-and-blue Timer still ticks down steadily.

Lena doesn’t talk to her driver tonight, though he’s always friendly and up for a chat, and she’s just glad when she lets herself into her condo to find a meal waiting for her, with a note from her housekeeper wishing her a good weekend. She knows that she’s lucky, that her life could be worse. Lena goes through the motions of eating and resting in front of the television for a while, not really present in her own life, and she thinks that as much as this routine is boring her out of her mind, it works. And it won’t be long until she’s with her red-and-blue coded soul mate.

She goes to sleep clutching to the comfortable, if boring routine of her life, and hopes that her tomorrow will be better than her today. Before closing her eyes, her fingers trace her right wrist, then her left, and Lena lets herself linger on the spot where black-and-white numbers had once cycled through one minute more, one minute more, one minute more. All part of the routine.

 

 

 

In the middle of the night Lena wakes up.

Her left wrist is burning.

She looks down, and the black-and-white Timer is back, shadowed and a bit hazy, but getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow, in some way, her soul mate is _alive._


	8. Kara: Ages 22 to 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kara receives a gift, loses a gift, and receives a gift in the span of a single year...

Kara doesn’t know if either of her soul mates can do what she does, but she’s found that there is a lot of information to be pulled from the Timers—much more than what most people can get from them, at any rate. She’d never have been able to catch at the meanings of the myriad subtleties had she remained on Krypton; but here, on Earth, with the yellow sun strengthening everything about her, she can. She can see flickers of self-doubt darkening the green, can catch every spark of light against the shadows behind the black and white.

She hopes that her soul mates are human, that they can’t see the weight of the pain that she hides behind her smile and her lead-lined glasses.

 

She also hopes that her off-world soul mate will stop with the doing of any more derring-do, but the frequency with which the black-and-white Timer fades has become (almost) commonplace, much like the pain that had so startled her as a younger girl. Kara tries to tamp down her worrying as much as she can, but it’s just _so_ frequent that even Alex—who normally wouldn’t tease about something so serious—has taken to calling whoever’s on the other end of the Timer “Daredevil”.

Later, Kara will recognize it for an awful, cheesy half-reference to some comic book Alex had liked as a kid, but the name sticks, and Alex comes to use it so much that whenever she says “your soul mate” Kara knows she means “the one for the green numbers” exclusively.

 

***

 

“What _exactly_ do you think your Daredevil does?” Alex sometimes asks her when they’re all home, and Eliza, though Kara knows her foster mother to be exceptionally good at taming her own nosiness always nods, as if backing up the question.

Every time.

“Something dangerous,” Kara always says, biting back her tongue to keep from adding “something _exciting_ ”. She can’t say that she appreciates how many times Daredevil’s lifestyle has brought them within an inch from death, but there have been no big scares in a long time, so mostly she just trusts that they know what they’re doing. It isn’t as if she could stop them even if she wanted to (which, admittedly, she does…except it’s not her life and she shouldn’t force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do).

 

Regardless, the conversation always ends the same way.

 

Alex purses her lips and then says, “I hope they’re smart enough not to get themselves killed before they get to meet you.” Eliza, for her part, reassures her that things will work out the way they’re meant to, and then, inevitably, the conversation turns to Kara.

 

Or, more specifically, what Kara’s plans are now that she’s no longer in school.

 

That always stumps her a bit, because Kara can’t honestly say that she knows what she wants to be doing with her life. The only thing she knows, the only thing she can say with any certainty, is that whatever she’s meant to do, she’s not supposed to do it in Midvale.

There’s nothing wrong with Midvale as a town, really, except that it’s so _small_ and everybody knows Kara as “Eliza’s youngest girl” or “Bubbly Danvers” or “Two-Timers Kara” (it’s an unfortunate nickname, to say the least) and frankly she just wants to feel like anybody else sometimes. To feel invisible in a crowd, and not mind, because even though everybody is unique, not everybody is special to the collective world.

Not everybody can stand out, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In her case, standing out might be life-threateningly _dangerous_ , and Kara shivers a bit as she thinks of what people like Lex Luthor want to do to people like herself and Ka- _Clark_. She knows that lately there have been more aliens appearing on Earth—and many of them less human-passing than herself—but she also watches enough news to know that not everybody is happy about that.

That’s part of the reason why Kara feels that she must leave Midvale, and sooner rather than later. The more people she lives near, the more likely it is that her differences from the general populace will be overlooked. Or at least, Kara thinks that that’s the logical assumption—it certainly makes sense to her.

And there’s more to her decision than logic.

While she’s done well over the years, developing a usefully invisible goody-two-shoes image that she wears like a security blanket almost 24/7, Kara can’t deny that a part of her wants to leave simply for the sake of leaving; she can’t deny that there’s a part of her that feels like she was meant for more than these kind people and a quiet, peaceful life. There’s a part of her that wants to see so much more of this beautiful young planet upon which she’d been fortunate enough to land.

She wants to be somewhere where the people are more varied; people from all over the world; people with stories to tell. Though she might never find someone whose story matches hers exactly, Kara knows enough about human history now to know that there are people who have been made—for whatever purpose—to flee their beloved homeland, to leave everything behind, to stand helpless on the sidelines as everything they had once held dear went up into flames.

Yes, there’s a whole _world_ out there: cities and villages and towns and countries and places, places, places. All of them different from each other, all of them with their own feeling, their own flair, sharing only the yellow sun’s warmth between them all; and Kara wants to be out there in the middle of it all. She wants to be part of it. She wants to feel the wonder of moving away to a place that’s brand new and unlike anything she’s ever experienced before, and she wants to feel that _without_ having the immediate trauma of having lost her home to taint it.

 

She isn’t surprised when Eliza agrees that it might be best for her to move away; Eliza loves her so much, and Kara loves her for it, but they both know that she was never meant to be tucked away in an idyllic little coast-side town.

 

 

 

“Why don’t you visit Clark and Lois in Metropolis?”

“I think I might stop by there first,” Kara says, because she knows that she should. Because she knows that that is the answer that Eliza is expecting. Because she knows that Clark would probably like to see her even though his own visits to her have been scattered at best—and at worst, rather scarce. Of course, Kara understands that her cousin is busy but _honestly_ , one would think that at least some part of him would want to know how she’s doing. Sure, he calls, on occasion, and texts and emails with some frequency, but he’s _Superman_ for crying out loud. There’s no excuse for him visiting so infrequently.

She’d never tell him so, of course, because she admires and respects him too much to want to bring up something so inconsequential; that doesn’t stop her from feeling a bit neglected (by him, specifically) every now and again.

“I have to be in Metropolis for a few days, actually,” Alex says. “You can join me, and then maybe stay in National City while you decide what you’re going to do next. Sound good?” Kara beams, because she knows that Alex is perfectly aware of just how good that offer sounds.

 

There’s a moment where Eliza and Alex exchange a look, but Kara doesn’t catch what the meaning is.

She figures that if it has anything to do with her, they’ll tell her eventually, anyway.

 

“You’re the best big sister ever, Alex,” Kara says, and she means it. She’d never had anything like her relationship with Alex back on Krypton, and if there’s one thing that she will forever be thankful for, it is that she got the chance to have this. To have somebody in whom she might confide all her smallest fears, all her largest secrets and everything in between, without fear of mockery or judgement (outside of the inescapable older-sibling-mockery-and-judgement that nobody in her position could ever escape from).

Alex winks. “And you would know.”

Eliza watches them with a look that’s half-pride, half-sadness, and Kara envelops her foster mother in a not-too-tight hug. “It’s time that you went out into the world. I just can’t believe that both my girls are too old to need me anymore.”

“We’re never not going to need you, Mom,” says Alex, throwing an arm over her mother as Kara snuggles in close. She’s always been something of a hugger, and growing up as a Danvers had only cemented that. Humans are certainly far more encouraging of physical affection—or at least, these humans are—and Kara is glad for that, too.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

The visit to Metropolis is pleasant, if short, but Kara can’t feel too badly about that as she and Alex settle in for the flight to National City. Realistically they could have taken a bus, or even driven there themselves. Kara would have just carried her sister all the way there, except that of course, that would be giving herself away and that is the Last Thing™ that she or Alex could want.

Kara finds it surreal to be flying on a plane. She doesn’t use her powers much, truth be told, but sometimes she does go for little flights, quick little bursts of freedom, and the sensation that that brings is entirely different to this. It’s only when she catches a glimpse of the sky that surrounds the plane that she remembers that she’s flying at all, that she’s not just sitting on a packed, rattling tube of a train or something. The feeling is so different from the wind in her hair and the sun on her back that comes with her flying on her own, but for some reason, Kara finds that she doesn’t mind flying this way too much.

It might be slower than if she were to do this on her own, but it’s nice too, to just sit on a plane like any other young woman. It’s nicer that she has this time to bond with Alex, whom she loves dearly, and whom she misses a lot now that Alex’s work has picked up. It feels as if the other woman is barely around nowadays.

Kara can practically picture how this is going to go, at least for the first few days. They’re just going to hang around Alex’s apartment; watch movies and eat pizza and pot-stickers. Talk about the things that they’ve been missing in each other’s lives, the things that have filled up the spaces between them while Alex has been off working, and Kara has been living in Midvale with Eliza.

 

What she doesn’t expect is for Alex to give the cab driver an address that Kara has _literally_ never heard of, the smile on her face so wide that Kara isn’t sure what to make of it. What she doesn't expect is for the cabbie to take them to a charming red-brick apartment building where Alex just happens to have a key. What she doesn’t expect is for Alex to walk right up to a unit at the end of a hallway on one of the building’s upper floors as if she owns the place before producing the mysterious key and opening the door.

Kara thinks she’s figured out what’s happening before she’s stepped over the threshold, but everything _really_ clicks into place when Eliza pops out from behind a wall somewhere and says “Surprise!” in the same happy voice that Kara remembers from every single birthday she’s ever had on Earth.

“Eliza! Alex! What is all this?” she asks.

“Before you say you couldn’t possibly accept this, consider it a gift from me,” Eliza says. “A late graduation gift, because I love you very much, Kara, and I want to know that you’ll be safe and comfortable even though you’re living away from home.”

Kara is flustered at that. She knows that Eliza would do anything for her, that Eliza loves her as if she had been born a Danvers, but there are times—like right now—where, if she weren’t more structurally sound than regular humans on principle, she’s sure she would be completely, _literally_ bowled over by the generosity that her foster family has shown her. She knows that this isn’t unheard of, that there are human parents who do these things for their children. She also knows that some children would accept such a gift begrudgingly at best, as if their parents’ interference has cost them part of a valuable growing-up experience, but Kara, for one, appreciates it; and she makes no attempt to argue that she couldn’t possibly accept such a gift.

 

She knows that Eliza would get her way in the end, eventually, and besides, this apartment is…well, it’s just lovely.

 

There’s not really a lot going on in terms of furniture, a few of the basics spaced out around the place. As Kara’s foster mother and sister take her from room to room in the surprisingly roomy space, she notes bits and bobs from her trips to Alex’s apartments—a lamp she’d said was fun-looking here, one of her favourite of Alex’s armchairs there. She can’t quite believe that they’ve set this up for her, and it isn’t until Alex presses the key into her hand and stresses that she should call if she needs _anything_ that Kara realizes that yeah, this is real, she has an apartment and its hers and she’s living on her own now, in National City.

Secretly, Kara’s glad that Eliza and Alex have done this for her; she’s been toying with the idea of living in the same city as her sister for a while now. It’s close enough to Midvale and Metropolis that visits to Eliza and Clark won’t be a hassle, even if she has to travel the regular way. Also, it would be nice to be able to drop in on Alex, instead of having to wait around for her sister to come back from yet another important summit or last-minute-extended-work-trip. She accepts her family’s gift with little cajoling and a little-too-much gratitude (in their opinion; in hers it isn’t nearly enough) and slowly, slowly, Kara starts to settle into a life on her own.

 

As it turns out, it’s a lot of sitting on her couch, staring out the beautiful big bay windows and just listening to the liveliness of the city around her. At least, that’s almost all she does (aside from eat) for the first couple days on her own.

 

Kara spends the next few weeks inundating both Eliza and Alex with messages of gratitude and love and appreciation until finally, finally, they both tell her, in their own ways, to stop texting and calling and start living her life; “it’s time to look for a job, Kara,” Alex tells her, while Eliza sticks with a more mom-like, “be safe while you look for a job, sweetheart”.

A job.

A _job_ , right, she’d forgotten about that.

Kind of silly, considering how vital having her own source of income is to her living on her own, but everything is happening so much faster than she’d been used to in scenic Midvale, so Kara thinks she can be excused. She throws herself into the job search with gusto, glad that Eliza had insisted she work odd-jobs at the mall as a teen. At least she isn’t woefully without experience to go with her shiny, new, most-people-have-them-now degree.

Surprisingly, it seems that the job market in National City hasn’t been hit as badly as other places in the United States, and there are plenty of ads for entry-level positions that don’t require five years of experience and a driver’s licence and half of the applicant’s soul.

 

That’s the joke that other Millennials make about job hunting, right?

Or something like that, at any rate.

 

Anyway, Kara starts to pore over ads in the newspaper, hunting down online job listings, and even though most of the jobs needing to be filled are well-beneath the standard that her level of education would suggest, she applies to each and every thing that interests her even a little bit. She’s consumed enough Earthly media to know that that’s okay, that the people who just _know_ what they want to do are the lucky ones.

There are just so many _options_ out there and frankly, if there’s something she’s not sure that she’d ever thought she could miss about Krypton, it’s the whole thing of having her future narrowed down for her. Had she grown into adulthood back home, she would have been ushered into life as either a scientist, like her father, or a judicator, like her mother. As a child, she hadn’t wanted to do either of those things—at least, she hadn’t preferred either life—and as an adult, on Earth, with so many options open to her, Kara decides that it would probably be best to stray away from those fields. Even if she sort of wishes she could just pick one and stick with it.

Science, because it would be too easy—and yet not really, there are so many differences between the way humans measure and categorize and test compared to the way they’d done things on Krypton—and law because…well, much as Kara loves learning, she’s not sure that Earth classrooms are the best place for her anymore.

It gets to the point where she almost wishes Eliza would tell her what to do. Not that Eliza would tell her what to do, in any case, but Kara is hoping for at least some sort of push—not that she gets one, as Eliza is firmly set in the belief that Kara will succeed at anything she puts her hand to.

 

As the days turn into weeks of searching, Kara finds that she could use a little bit of a push in…well, any direction.

 

When she calls Alex for advice, her sister responds by telling her to do “something she loves”. Kara thinks hard about that. She loves food, but she’d make a wretched cook of any kind. She loves the Timers on her wrists, but to get a job of any kind related to soul mates requires a strict educational path beginning from grade school, and she’d missed the bus on that one by quite a few years. She loves to help people, loves the feeling of knowing that she’d managed to save someone—perhaps because Earth has saved her—but to join a profession that would allow her to save people in the traditional sense might be risky considering certain…invulnerabilities of hers.

It isn’t easy, being an adult on Earth.

Not even with superhuman abilities.

 

 

***

 

 

 

Kara begins to spend almost all her time mulling over all her options, and she thinks that she might have stayed in that state of professional limbo for a rather long time were it not for the second death of Krypton (metaphorically speaking, of course). All these years, and Kara had thought—foolishly, she now knows—that every loss she felt would be the same as it had been when they’d lost Jeremiah. She’d felt, for whatever _stupid_ reason, as if she could never truly be hurt by anything; as if her heart, safeguarded after years of numbness and sleep, would never be able to love anyone outside of Eliza and Alex strongly enough to make her _ache_ at another loss.

 

She’s proven wrong when her soul mate, her very own Daredevil, dies in the twilight hours of an October morning.

 

 

 

For real this time.

 

 

 

Kara can barely believe it when the first rush of cold shoots through her right wrist. She barely manages to set her new plates down on the table before she’s cradling her hand to her chest, and even though she knows that she can’t do anything about this, she hopes that she’s wrong. Daredevil isn’t dying.

 

They can’t be dying.

 

They’re just not the dying type, she reminds herself—they’ve been through this twice before. As much as she and Alex had worried about it, she had never expected that Daredevil would die. Logical though she is—and Kara _is_ logical, despite the happy-go-lucky demeanour she’s adopted since becoming Kara Danvers—she’d never even toyed with the possibility, still believing in the kindness of a universe that had been _most_ unkind to her from an early age onward. She’d never thought…

Oh, _Rao_ , her _wrist_!

It’s as if somebody has cuffed her right hand in pure ice, and if she were human she suspects she might feel worse, might feel the cold efficiency of Death creeping in as if to make off with her own life, and not only the life of somebody to whom she is bound. As it is, the physical pain she feels is easily surpassed by the mental anguish of this entire ordeal.

Kara’s had countless encounters to get used to the pain that accompanies near-death experiences (her other soul mate has been in a couple situations like that themselves in the past year, whether they realize it or not) but there’s a whisper in the back of her mind, taunting her. _You know loss, Kara,_ it tells her, _you know this feeling._

_You know that this is real._

 

This can’t be happening.

 

Please.

 

Please, Rao.

 

She tries her best not to scream, but the jagged sobs that tear themselves free of her lips are little better.

 

The cold gives way eventually, but Kara knows, before she looks down, that the black-and-white numbers on her wrist have gone. She feels the lack of them as distinctly as if she had cut her hand off herself. There’s a nothingness, a disconnect, that makes the space of her wrist feel as if it doesn’t even belong to her anymore. When she finally manages to avert her gaze downwards, Kara doesn’t cry. She knows that she should. She wants to.

 

It takes Alex dropping by unannounced for the dam to break, and once it does, Kara cries more than she has in all her time on Earth.

 

To call her soul mate’s death the second death of Krypton would be unfair.

 

 

 

It feels different.

 

 

 

In some ways, it hurts more.

 

 

 

As she cries, held safe in her sister’s arms, Kara wonders if she’ll ever be able to feel the way she’d once felt. All bright and shiny and optimistic about her life on Earth. She’d come to this planet to escape the tragedy of her home world dying, and she’d been treated with such great love and care that she’d felt, after years of nights spent crying, that she’d one day find true happiness here.

 

 

 

And dreaming about the day she was united with her two soul mates had played a large part in that.

 

 

Now, that dream will only ever be half fulfilled.

 

 

 

And Kara knows that it isn’t fair to her other soul mate; whoever they are, she doesn’t doubt that they’re feeling the pain, the awful emptiness that has hollowed out a place in her chest where a part of her heart had been prior. She wants to comfort them—because that, at least, they will be able to do for each other—but it’s still about two years until they meet, and Kara doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel in the interim.

How can she possibly smile when Darede—her soul mate—is dead and isn’t coming back? She’d always thought that one day she’d be able to joke, that one day the three of them—she and her soul mates, all alive and together and happy—would be able to just curl up on her couch and share stories about their day.  She’d always thought that one day she’d be able to joke, to say, “We used to call you Daredevil” or something like that.

 

 

 

Now she’ll never even know their real name.

 

 

 

Because they’re dead.

 

 

 

And this time, no matter how much Kara wishes it would happen, they’re

 

 

 

never

 

 

 

coming

 

 

 

back.

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

It takes about a year of messing up coffee orders and forgetting to keep the salad dressing on the side before Kara starts to feel that Cat Grant, Queen of All Media, might actually appreciate her. She must admit, having her powers makes things much easier than they might be for a regular human, which is probably why Cat has kept her on for so long—though so far Cat doesn’t seem to have any idea that her assistant is anything other than just an ordinary young woman.

 

As Kara holds Cat’s latte in her hand, willing it to stay scalding hot, she finds herself thinking about her soul mate. There’s a little more than a year left on her Timer, and she’s getting impatient to know who it is that she’s been bound to since the day she was born. She also thinks of the soul mate they’d lost, but she knows that Cat doesn’t like for her to look upset while on the job, so she quickly banishes the thought behind one of her sunny smiles.

October is just about as busy as any other month, really, and Kara is greeted with the usual flurry of activity as she walks out of the elevator. Winn shoots her a dopey grin and she smiles back; he’s always been kind to her. “Morning, Winn.”

“Hey, Kara,” he says before turning back to his screen. She thinks that he might be playing a game, but she knows that it won’t bother anyone so long as he eventually gets around to doing his work. She can’t imagine what it is exactly that he does around here, but hey, she’s mostly just Cat’s assistant, and even though it’s been a year she still has a lot to learn about the way CatCo works.

 

Kara finds herself drifting off in her thoughts as she approaches Cat’s office—the woman has seen her coming and is pursing her lips to show Kara that she’s _most_ displeased at having arrived before her morning coffee—but she can’t help it. It’s October, after all. Hard not to think about other things—like her dead soul mate—even though she should be one hundred percent committed to her job. If Cat can tell that Kara isn’t perfectly focused on being her assistant—which she most certainly knows, because Cat knows everything—then she doesn’t ask, which is surprising, to say the least.

Then again, Cat does have a way of figuring things out so—

“Oh!”

She isn’t hurt or anything, but her wrist is itching, itching so much that she can’t ignore it, and Cat is watching with her shrewd eyes. It takes every shred of concentration she has for her to hand Cat the still-a-touch-too-hot latte, but she can barely stop herself from tearing the skin from her wrist. Kara hears her name (incorrectly pronounced) fall from the older woman’s lips with an indignant edge, but she’s too bothered by what’s going on to care.

“I-I’m sorry Ms. Grant, excuse me,” she stammers out before walking away, speeding towards the restroom as if her life depends on it. She’s cradling her right wrist and though she receives a ton of strange looks as she rushes past her coworkers, Kara can’t say that she minds. She’s too concerned with whatever is going on.

 

Why is her right wrist burning?

 

She hasn’t felt anything since…

 

_What in Rao’s name_?

 

Kara hides away in the first available stall, fingers slipping against the lock. Her hands are shaking, and it takes more time than it should for her to roll her sleeve up just enough to see the shadows of a familiar black-and-white Timer beginning to appear—reappear—on her skin. It’s only a matter of seconds before the entire thing is over, and then when it ends, when the itching sensation finally leaves her skin, Kara is watching her black-and-white Timer counting down, chasing a minute down as it had for all those years, and she half-gasps in the emptiness of the restroom.

 

She doesn’t know how it’s possible, but she doesn’t care, because this is real.

 

This is happening.

 

Thank _Rao._

 

 

 

Her off-world soul mate is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so terribly sorry that the wait has been this long for this chapter, and I do hope that this will be okay. Adjusting to a new schedule has been difficult (even more so than anticipated) but I believe I'm getting a hang of things, and will be doing my best to honour my twice-monthly updating schedule. Should anything change, I will change the author's note to reflect that. Again, thank you all so much for the wait. The next chapter should not take quite so long to come out, but please bear with me if it is not put up in as timely a manner as you'd like.
> 
> Also, thank you all so very much for all your support! Your kind words have seen me through some difficult things as of late :)


	9. Sara: Age 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara finds acceptance, and something else finds her...

Sara doesn’t necessarily want to leave Starling City after Slade Wilson is captured and sent to Lian Yu. She can tell that the Arrow and his team will need help, that her being there to aid in the process of rebuilding the city would be ideal, but she cannot stay. She’s promised Nyssa after all—the League’s assistance in exchange for her return to Nanda Parbat.

Sara may not love the arrangement, but she could never go back on a promise—not one she’s made to Nyssa.

“Are you ready to go, Beloved?”

Sara can’t help but preen a little at the purr in Nyssa’s voice but she can’t quite hide the sadness in her eyes, and she knows it. While she will always love the Heir to the Demon, she will never truly be part of the League, and returning to Ra’s Al Ghul’s halls is not something she wants to rush towards. Aside from Nyssa, there is no one there who knows her, no one there who treats her as more than Ta-er al-Sahfer. It is as if Sara Lance does not exist—or at least, as if nobody _cares_ for her to exist, save for Nyssa—and Sara isn’t sure if she’s ready to give up the feeling of having friends who love her for who she is.

“Sara?”

Nyssa’s reflection mirrors her own—undoubtedly, she knows of Sara’s feelings—so Sara tries on a small smile, shaking her head. “Just one more moment, then I’ll be ready.” She doesn’t want just one more moment, but really, it’s all that she can think to ask for at this point. It isn’t as if she’d be able to ask for what she really wants. She’s wiser than she was the last time she left Starling City on a ship; she knows that she has made a promise that must be honoured, regardless of what she wants.

From the pained look in Nyssa’s eyes, she knows that what Sara wants is to be free of the League—just as she knows (as they both know) that Ra’s, for all that he has never truly accepted Sara despite her skills, will never release her, either.

As if to rid her head of such sad thoughts, Nyssa nods, signalling the captain of their ship. Technically they’ve already left Starling—or at least, left the ground that constitutes Starling. Sara had asked for a few moments of reflection, had been told that the ship could stay in the bay for as long as she needed, but she knows better than to dally. The longer she stays here, stuck motionless on a motionless ship, the more she’ll be tempted to stay. The more she’ll be tempted to jump, to dive into the disgusting water and swim her way to shore, to Team Arrow’s foundry, to her home.

She shakes her head; she must truly be off-centre, to think that she’d be willing to swim that distance. Sara has been wary of the water for years now, and no amount of coaxing has managed to cure her of that. She doesn’t think that even the promise of home is enough to cure her of that.

That, and the bay is in a truly appalling state.

Sighing, Sara hugs herself as she looks upon her city’s skyline for the last time (or at least, the last time for an indeterminate amount of time) and then she turns away, allowing Nyssa to take her by the hand. Nyssa almost glows at the touch, and her grip is tender, but firm as she half-pulls, half-guides Sara away from the deck. Sara can’t help but smile a little at the other woman’s apparent joy.

The rift that had sprung up between them following Sara’s abandonment of the League is not irreparable, not necessarily, but their relationship feels changed nonetheless. Sara knows that Nyssa will always love her, and, perhaps a little selfishly, she believes that it is quite possible that she had been Nyssa’s soul mate; that Nyssa will possibly never love another as greatly as she does Sara. As much as she is flattered, though, and as much as she will never _not_ love Nyssa in her own way, Sara does hope (at least in some part of her heart) that she’s wrong. She hopes that Nyssa’s soul is bound to another, that she’ll be happy with a woman who deserves her.

It won’t be Sara, most likely (definitely) not, but somebody who can love Nyssa fiercely, openly…the way that Sara had once done…that sounds like the kind of person that Nyssa needs.

 

The kind of woman that Nyssa deserves.

 

As it is, Sara’s the only one who doesn’t truly deserve happiness; or at least, not with a soul mate, but she would never want to begrudge such joy to one of the most important people in her world. If only Sara ends up alone, it will be fine. If she’s the only one who never finds happiness—and how could she, she has no Dreams—then that will be okay. If all the people she loves eventually meet the ones for whom they’ve been destined, then that will be more than okay.

“Your forehead is crinkling, Beloved. You are bothering yourself thinking about the future, about things that involve both your happiness and my own, and the happiness of many others for whom you care. That will not do.”

“How can you tell?”

Nyssa’s sad smile winds it’s way towards Sara’s heart and she wishes, not for the first time, that she had been able to see her Dreams. That they would have been pointing her towards Nyssa all this time. It would be easier for them both. It would make them both happy.

 

But she does not get her Dreams—she never has, never will—and she is not Nyssa’s soul mate.

 

Not in this life, at the very least.

 

 

 

Her wrists tickle in the chill of the night air, but, as she has always done, Sara simply ignores the feeling; after everything that’s happened, her curiosity about the numbers on her skin will have to wait.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

She does not have much time to think about the numbers on her wrists once they set foot in Ra’s al Ghul’s halls, anyway. To Sara’s surprise, she is welcomed, but she suspects that it has more to do with Nyssa’s stern looks and quiet conversations with Ra’s than anything else. Sara mostly just shrugs things off and sets down the path of trying to find a new balance—trying to mediate between the side of her that had killed to survive, because it was her job, and the side of her that had taken up with the Arrow to fight and defend innocents from those who would cause them harm.

 

 

Sara searches for answers to who she is, and what she is, and in truth, she thinks that perhaps there is truly no better place for her to be—at least for the moment—than Nanda Parbat.

 

 

What she finds during her months back in the home of the League is not peace, but acceptance. Acceptance of who she once was and who she had became on Lian Yu. Acceptance of who she had been during her recovery and who she had been when she chose the life of the League (a decision that she knows was made half out of love and gratitude and half out of a fear that she would have no place in her home. Acceptance of the woman she was only months ago, the woman who fought alongside the Arrow at night and came back from the dead in the eyes of the world in the day.

Acceptance of the road that lies before her now that she is somewhere in between—not quite an assassin, but not quite an ordinary citizen of the world.

Sara is stronger now than she ever has been before. She excels in places where others fail, can adjust her stance or her technique at even the slightest instruction where others require more guidance, sterner commands. Most days, she requires no instruction at all—most days all she requires is a quirk of an eyebrow, or a tilt of a head. Ra’s Al Ghul would be openly pleased with her were she to wholly embrace her darkness, but Sara does not want to do anything just for the sake of pleasing _him_.

While he may not like (or accept) her place as part of the League, he cannot deny her skill, nor her importance in his daughter’s life, and for that alone she is assured a place within his halls. Sara is wary of any ill intentions he might have towards her, but as the months continue to pass, she realizes that he simply does not care to bother himself with her. One so torn as she is, so indecisive of spirit, could never matter much to the League, but he knows—surely, he must know—that she would not turn on them. How could she, when the League has given her a home? When the League has taught her how to be strong, has given her the tools to ensure that she can play a part in protecting the innocent, protecting the weak.

Content that she will not be assassinated in her sleep, Sara attempts to rebuild herself as she trains. Occasionally Ra’s sends her somewhere on a mission, and though she does not revel in it, she does his bidding; more often than not, the targets are the kind of men and women who deserve death, and though she had not killed back home, in respect to Oliver’s wishes, she does not find it difficult to slip back into the habit. The tears that she always sheds—later, alone—are more for the fact that she is past redemption than for the souls of those departed by her hand.

 

After a number of these missions, she finds that she no longer cries, not even for herself.

 

It would seem that Ra’s does not care much about her moral qualms anymore, providing that she still does the job that is expected of her. Sara might not like it—she hates it, as a matter of a fact—but she cannot lie and say that she feels squeamish in the face of killing men and women who are more monster than human. She is aware that despite all the acceptance she has allowed herself, hers is still a soul conflicted, and yet, there’s some small part of her that knows that she will not be with the League for much longer.

 

Even Nyssa, who watches her with hopeful, loving eyes, must know that Sara will not be able to stay.

 

Sara was never meant to stay in a place like this.

 

For now, however, she treads softly through the Demon’s Head’s halls, living as she had during her time as Ta-er al-Sahfer. This life, while ultimately not the life she wants, is familiar to her. Comfortable in that although she knows she does not belong, she cannot help but feel at ease. Feel at home. A large part of this is due to Nyssa, and her companionship, and the way she has of assuring Sara that everything will turn out right in the end; a surprisingly optimistic view for a woman raised under the conditions in which Nyssa has been raised, but a view that Nyssa expresses nonetheless.

 They are not lovers anymore, perhaps never will be again, but in Nyssa, Sara has found a true friend; one who understands not only her past, but her present, and her wishes for the future.

Sara knows, too, that there is something about Nanda Parbat that has always made her feel more comfortable than even the city she loves so much. The only thing that anyone has ever asked of her here, she has been able to supply. Her strength. Her skill. She has never been expected to be more than Ta-er al-Sahfer, and though, as Ra’s so often stresses, she is not truly of the League, she feels at home with them regardless. Though she may not be certain as to the nobility of the League’s purpose, she remains one of the strongest that Ra’s has under his command, and for that, too, she is accepted by most her fellows. It’s nice to feel important.

 

That, and there is one other thing that has her so pleased with Nanda Parbat.

 

Here, in this place, the numbers on her wrists do not cause eyebrows to raise, do not cause questions to fall from lips that curl upwards as their owners try win information from her that she herself does not have. Here, in Nanda Parbat, to talk of love is foolishness; to talk of soul mates, forbidden. It is a rare occasion that sees her and Nyssa talk about such things, and given their past, and the uncertainty of their future, Sara does not often have to think about the fact that her Dreams never came.

Instead, as she settles in, as the months fly past, Sara thinks about the numbers more and more often. It would appear to her that perhaps she has thought of the numbers more now than she has ever thought about them in her entire life. Given that her schedule is a touch laxer than it had been during her original time with the League, she finds that she has the time for such reflections and, just as she appreciates how much growing she has done, she appreciates the chance to question her reality.

Why had she been born destined for numbers on her wrists, and not Dreams in her head?

Do the numbers across her wrists mean anything, or is she never to know why she has been marked this way?

She had been embarrassed about them in Starling, embarrassed whenever Oliver’s hands would catch at her wrists, whenever his lips would graze the skin and cause the numbers to seem to bristle and writhe. Embarrassed when Dig’s sharp eyes would glint with his curiosity, his unasked inquiries filling the otherwise companionable silences that they had so often shared. Embarrassed when Felicity’s sweet smile would quirk with confusion as Sara pulled her sleeves down, down, down over the ever-changing numbers, an old habit that she had thought to be forever lost from the moment she was lost off the Queen’s Gambit.

Sometimes she wonders why she never thought to ask them, Oliver’s team—her team, too, for a while—if they had ever seen anything like the numbers.

She thinks that maybe, just maybe, they might have been able to help her figure things out, at least a little bit, and though she knows that they won’t be seeing each other again for some time, Sara makes a mental note to ask Felicity if she’s ever heard of anything like the numbers across her wrists. She does not doubt that she will be seeing them again, and soon, but soon is relative in Nanda Parbat, and time can feel as quick or as long-drawn as one wishes. At least, that is what some of the newer initiates say.

Sara knows better, of course, if only because her numbers—when did she start thinking of them as hers—are always ticking down, always chasing minute after minute after minute.

 

When Sara closes her eyes, she dreams of flashes of blue and blurs of red, and of steady, patient, waiting greens, and when she wakes she is never quite sure what she had seen.

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as she sets foot within the city’s limits, she can tell that Merlyn isn’t there, but that suits her purposes just as well. It’s just a feeling, a strong one, but she’s in no rush to return to Nanda Parbat. After all, Ra’s had told her that it was possible that she would not encounter Al Saher in the flesh; part of her job is simply to perform reconnaissance.

It has been half a year when she arrives in Starling once again, and she takes a moment to simply stand atop a rooftop, watching her the city’s pulse. She knows Starling City’s streets and alleyways as well as she does the scars mapped out across her skin, and that’s why Sara is perfectly fine with Ra’s sending her to track down Al Saher.

Sara takes a moment to tug her gloves down over her wrists; the numbers—that she still hasn’t figured out, even with Nyssa’s help—are distracting. She can’t afford to be distracted. Stalking through the darkness cast by the broken buildings that have yet to be cleared from the Glades, Sara picks her way towards where she knows one of her League brethren is waiting. There’s no smoke, none of the tell-tale signs that there is another of her kind here, but she knows that there is.

The League is everywhere, and they are always watching.

 

They cannot use the old ways of communication, unfortunately, as Merlyn _is_ aware of their customs; it would be most unwise to alert him or any informants he might have to any of their movements. Instead, Sara must rely on what she knows about the League’s newest hiding places—that much, at least, had changed since Merlyn’s release and the subsequent razing of the Glades.

“Ta-er al-Sahfer.”

She nods towards the darkness, waiting for her fellow assassin (though she is not sure that she still _is_ one) to step out into the dim light of the alley. She knows this place; she had played at a park near here as a small child, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. Even if she wanted to revisit the memory, it wouldn’t matter much. There will be a time for that later.

“What do you know?” she asks.

“Only that the Arrow has been hard-pressed keeping the streets clean. There’s a new strain of Vertigo circulating throughout the Glades, perhaps the most potent strain that’s ever been introduced to the city.”

“I meant about Al-Saher,” she says, though she stores that information away as well.

The assassin blinks, bowing their head in a manner that might have been unnoticeable to others, though Sara takes it for slight embarrassment. “There has been no movement that we can say is directly connected to Al-Saher, but we are doing our best, Ta-er al-Sahfer.”

“Good. We’ll rendezvous again in a few day’s time.”

The assassin nods and disappears into the night, and Sara is left alone with her thoughts. As usual. It’s not too late in the evening, but still a bit too early for the Arrow to be out and about. Sara smiles to herself; she wonders if it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hang around on a rooftop for a while. Maybe check out what’s going on over on the Arrow’s comm. frequencies.

 

She laughs into the darkness of the alley.

It couldn’t hurt, surely.

 

 

 

Turns out that Ollie is surprised, but pleasantly so, to see her return to Starling. She banters a bit with him, and, to the other’s surprise, with Felicity, through the comm., and then she’s off. She _does_ have to do a few more things—League business—before she can retire for the night. Before she can hole up in her safe house and contemplate dropping in on her father.

She just doesn’t want to stress him out, that’s all. Things have been tough for him lately, and she knows that, but she doesn’t know if dropping in on him out of the blue would be the best thing for him. Sara knows that her father will always be happy to see her, but she just thinks that it makes sense, that she just shouldn’t see him. That it would be better for him if she didn’t go to him, only to have to leave again in pursuit of Malcolm Merlyn.

 

That’s what she tells herself, anyway. It has nothing to do with the strange feeling that she’s been carrying around since she set foot in Starling. She’s just anxious because she knows how dangerous Merlyn can be, even from a distance. Yeah, that’s it.

That’s what she tells herself internally as she and Laurel share a moment.

That’s what she tells herself as she watches her sister’s back, as she herself turns to leave.

 

That’s possibly one of the last thoughts she has before she turns around to see Thea, little Speedy, with a bow and arrow trained on her chest.

 

The final thought she has as Thea’s arrows steal the wind from her is, surprisingly, not of Nyssa or of Laurel or of any person she knows; rather, Sara Lance’s final thought concerns the numbers on her wrists.

 

 

 

For some reason, she feels almost as if there’s emotion there; as if the numbers are sad.

But that’s ridiculous.

 

 

 

Numbers can’t be sad.

 

 

 

Sara is dead before her body hits the dumpster, dead already when Laurel scoops her lifeless body into suit-clad arms, crying and bloody from the mess that Sara’s death has created. Sara is dead, and that’s why she will never know—because Laurel will never say—how difficult the trek to the foundry is. She will never know the pain, never know how Laurel refused to let her sister go. She’ll never feel Laurel’s lips against her forehead, and against her wrists, never see the sadness in her sister’s eyes because Laurel had always thought, always believed that one day they would find out why Sara had never gotten her Dreams…

Why she’d only gotten those numbers instead.

 

No, Sara Lance will never know any of those things, will never feel those feelings or watch her sister sink into sadness…

 

 

 

Because Sara Lance…

 

 

 

Is dead.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

Until she isn’t.

Until Laurel uses the Lazarus Pit and brings her back to life.

Of course, she doesn’t know that that’s what’s happened to her as soon as she’s revived, but she’ll figure that out later.

 

It’s been more than a year, and her soul had been half at-peace, but the Lazarus Pit has pulled her back, has pulled her out of that. The body of which she had once been so proud is restored, and she is alive. Strong. Practically glowing with her vitality—though if that is not more than just the torchlight glinting off her still-wet skin, she does not know. Does not care. She’s alive.

 

Except that, where it matters, she still isn’t _quite_ alive.

 

And she won’t be for a while.

 

She doesn’t know that.

 

She doesn’t know anyone.

 

But they’ll be finding that out soon enough.

 

As it is, she can barely remember her own name.

 

It might have started with an S.

 

The first thing that she can really focus on as soon as she bursts free from the water of the Pit is life, is the power of being _alive_ , and she is strong, so strong. So powerful. And there’s the little girl who’d killed her, standing there with eyes wide in horror. She doesn’t know why, but she is angry, so angry, because she was a warrior, she was _more_ than human…and this _child_ had been the one to kill her.

Disgraceful.

She sees faces, half-recognizes them, even, but all she cares about is the girl. The girl who’d killed her. The one who’d shot her chest full of arrows, first one, then two, then three.

Three.

Thea.

Thea Queen.

That’s the only name she can remember from what had been her life before. That’s the only name that matters. She does not know her own name, but she knows that she must kill, and she must kill Thea Queen. She tries to do it, but she’s stopped from doing so. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her.

 

 

 

She doesn’t realize what’s happening until the woman with the sad eyes—the one with the dirty-blonde hair, not the brunette—has chained her up in some dark, cold place. Fear does not touch her—that would require more mental capacities than those currently under her power—but she is angry. _So angry._ She does not know her name, but she was never meant to be chained, never meant to be held still like some _beast._

She is on a mission, and her mission is to kill Thea Queen.

 

 

 

The first chance she has, she breaks free from the shackles placed upon her by her familiar, sad-faced captor, and then she is gone, on the hunt for the one who had caused her first life to end.

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t know how she comes to be trapped in a nightmarish dreamscape of a place—perhaps, she thinks as she runs through the halls—perhaps she’s been here all along, unable to recognize it until now.

She hears voices calling to her, voices she knows.

Laurel.

Ollie.

She wants them to find her, she realizes, and she wants to be free from this creepy, misty place. The numbers on her wrists flash wildly, agitatedly, and Sara does not understand why but she thinks that perhaps, there’s something important about them. For the first time, she _feels_ something. Almost as if there were two presences by her, holding her wrists, keeping her grounded.

 

It’s crazy, and she doesn’t understand it, so instead, she runs.

 

She runs, calling out names she has not spoken in more than a year’s time, wondering if they can hear her, deciding that the improbability of all this is something that she can ignore, if only she ends up back with the people she loves. As she runs she remembers things, remembers feeling confused, remembers a mask upon her face, remembers black arrow shafts protruding from her chest.

The dream ends, and she wakes up in a foundry that is much, much more fancy than the one she remembers, and Laurel is there, and her father, and Oliver, and Felicity and Dig, and even though her head feels funny, she’s happy, because she remembers who she is now.

Now it isn’t just her body that’s recovered from the embrace of Death.

Now the rest of her has caught up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her name is Sara Lance, and she is _alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, all, and...
> 
> A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO VALNIXYRIE! Hope this chapter is a suitable birthday gift, dear! <3


	10. Lena: Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lena's life undergoes a great many changes...

It takes Lena all of one week to adjust to seeing the black-and-white Timer on her left wrist once again, but, after that, things start to feel…better. She can’t explain it precisely to herself, can’t really begin to describe it to anyone who asks, either, but it just feels like she’s…complete again. And she knows that she’s complete on her own, that regardless she’s her own person, but it’s nice. It’s reassuring to know that there’s a chance for her to be with _both_ her soul mates, the way that things were meant to be. It’s nice to feel, even if only for once, as if the world doesn’t hate her.

 

And if the reason why that’s the case ends up being too difficult for people to understand, well, it’s difficult for her to understand too.

 

Difficulties aside, Lena, who’s been through so much—too much—in the last two-decades-and-then-some of her life, isn’t about to turn away a bit of providence. After all, how many other people—barring herself and her in-universe soul mate—can claim that they have a soul mate who’s died (she still has nightmares) and come back to life (she sends thanks to all the gods she knows, not that she believes in any), defying all logical explanation? Lena doesn’t think that she’s ever seen such a thing pop up in all her many readings and all her many investigations into the matter.

 

And she’s not playing around about it.

 

She’s invested hundreds of thousands of hours into her studies on the matter.

 

Not that it’s all that important—her soul mate is _alive_ —but, from a scientific standpoint, it’s _fascinating._

 

She wonders if it’s common for people on her other soul mate’s Earth to die and then come back, if maybe the fabric of reality there is different from the reality in which she and her in-universe soul mate live. As a science-minded individual, she can’t think to keep such a thing out of the realm of possibility, no matter how strange it might seem. That just wouldn’t be scientific or logical in the least.

There are strange things in her world, to be sure—things like superheroes and aliens and people somehow not knowing that Bruce Wayne is the Batman and that his friend Clark Kent is also the Man of Steel—but death is still effectively permanent once it shows up. People don’t just resurrect themselves after a little more than a year of being well and truly deceased. That just isn’t done...not outside of the movies, at any rate.

There is no magic here—or at least none of which she is aware—but over there, wherever it is that her other soul mate still lives…perhaps, perhaps magic is indeed possible?

She shudders every time she thinks about it, no matter where she is or whom she’s with, because her soul mate _had_ been dead, and for quite some time. Lena remembers the way that she’d felt as it had happened, the sensation of numbness as present as it had been the first time. She remembers the days, the weeks, the months afterwards, as she’d tried, desperately, to throw her all into a company she didn’t truly care for. She’d tried so hard to do what she had seen Lillian do before her—to put all her energy, all her time and effort, into her work—but she’d never been able to escape the feeling that she was running away.

 

She’d used LuthorCorp to try to escape her problems, and the company had, under her half-distracted care, begun to suffer.

 

With her soul mate alive again, Lena isn’t entirely sure what to do. She’d taken on control of LuthorCorp in part out of grief, in part out of wanting to prove herself, but mostly for something to do, and…well, she’d be lying if she says she doesn’t care even in the slightest. She does. Because the company had once belonged to Lionel, and he had never been anything but good to her, and because Lex, the brother she had once loved more fiercely than anything, had once cared for it too.

Granted, he’d perhaps cared just a little more for what owning the family company gave him _access_ to…but that’s beside the point at this point.

She cannot lose the company; it’s the last thing she has of her family that she can hold on to, now that Lionel is dead and Lex is…never coming back. Lillian is never going to love her—a hard truth that she has taken far too long to accept. She knows that she must be realistic, and handle what the future might offer her in the way that a rational adult would. At the same time, Lena knows that to give up control of the company would be, in a way, giving up her claim on the family that had raised her ever since she was a scared little girl.

She knows that she cannot do that, but there is also a question of her ethics. As things stand, she knows that cannot allow LuthorCorp to continue on as is has always done. There is too much corruption there, too much darkness. She knows that Lex had been using LuthorCorp resources to finance his war against aliens, against Superman in particular. She cannot possibly allow that to continue. A great upheaval is in order, but she does not know if she can do it.

 

Does she have the strength?

 

As if in response to her question, her Timers pulse.

 

 

 

She decides.

 

 

 

Lena begins to actively participate in areas where once she had been little more than a passive supervisor. The board, perhaps confused and a little angry about her sudden about-face, doesn’t say anything, much to her surprise. They may be selfish and almost entirely under Lex’s thumb, but she knows that they are hoping for her to turn things around. LuthorCorp is a shadow of what it once was, no longer a titan of the business and technological worlds in the way that it had been at the height of Lex’s tenure as CEO. In the last year, stocks have plummeted, workers have been laid off, and so many of the careful little plans Lex had cooked up have shrivelled up and died away.

Lena can’t say she’s unhappy about that last part; LuthorCorp is _her_ company now, and she won’t be participating in the shadier aspects that remain as leftovers from Lex’s time as CEO. She’s going to do great things, greater than anything that anyone could ever expect from a Luthor, and she’s going to do them in her own way. She’s going to break free of the image of herself that Lillian had tried to drill into her brain, and she’s going to succeed and create a new path for not only herself, but for the people with whom she is meant to share her life.

In her head, Lena laughs at the thoughts; she doesn’t know when she’d started thinking in trite little platitudes, but she does mean it.

 

She’s going to be a Luthor unlike any other the world has ever seen. Nothing is going to stop her.

 

 

Nobody is going to stop her.

 

 

It’s something of a miracle, she thinks, and she thanks her soul mates for being the inspiration behind what will possibly be the biggest undertaking of her life so far.

 

 

Lena doesn’t have more than a few months to ponder the implications of the miracle that has brought her black-and-white Timer back, because all it takes is a few months, maybe half a year tops, before things start getting weird again. And by weird, she means downright _impossibly_ weird. The kind of weird that, were it used in a television show, would make regular, faithful viewers throw up their hands and say, what was it again?

 

Oh, yes, “fuck this shit, I’m out.”

 

Honestly, she doesn’t even know why she’s surprised anymore.

 

If the multi-verse theory is indeed possible (and it is, in all likelihood, _more_ than simply possible, if all the evidence she has gathered over the years is to be believed) then surely time travel isn’t as far out of the realm of possibility as most people would believe? Now, whether that means that there’s some H.G. Wells level time machine shenanigans underfoot, or whether she’s dealing with a different beast entirely, Lena isn’t sure, but she does know one thing. Well, more than one thing, but one thing specifically pertaining to the matter at hand.

 

Her soul mate, once dead, is now, for whatever _inexplicable_ reason, a time traveller.

 

That’s the _only_ way that she can rationalize the situation when, on one unextraordinary morning, she looks down at her left wrist to find that instead of one minute away, her off-universe soul mate is now, somehow, about forty years _behind_. Doing a quick calculation in her head, she figures that that would mean that currently, her soul mate is somewhere in the 1970’s, which, again, should strike her as impossible, although the reality is actually that she isn’t surprised at all.

 

She’s learning, however slowly, that she’s got better uses of her time than to question what’s going on with what has got to be one of the weirdest examples of soul mates in the history of the world.

 

“Don’t get stuck over there,” she says instead, smiling at how ridiculous it is that she still talks to her Timers as if they can hear her. “After all the worrying you’ve put us through, the least you could do is find your way to us.” After a minute, she realizes what she’s just said, and even though she’s perfectly alone, surrounded only by her furniture in the new penthouse that she’s just purchased in National City, she feels a sense of connection with two people she hasn’t even met. Switching her glance to her other wrist, she smiles just a little harder.

She’s got a little under a year to go before she meets her in-universe soul mate, and that’s both exciting and terrifying. The only thing that could potentially give her more cause for mild-terror-slash-excitement is the rebranding that she’s planning on doing, right here in sunny National City. She’s decided that the change will be a good thing for her, and so far, at least where her living arrangements are concerned, it has been exactly that.

The condo she’s purchased is nice. Spacious, but not overtly so, and decorated the way that she likes it, not in a way that seems more half Lillian, half Lex, the way her Metropolis home had seemed. It’s perhaps a little silly to get excited over something so simple, but Lena can’t help but relish the chance to design her living space exactly as she likes it.

Just as she’s wondering if she should put plumerias on the end table down the hall, or on the coffee table in the den, Jess appears, a slight smile on her face. “Is there anything else I can help you with for today, Miss Luthor?”

“No, Jess, thank you, that will be all,” Lena says. Jess has been a godsend throughout the whole move; Lena doesn’t think she could have asked for a more  loyal, attentive assistant. She wonders if people will think it strange that her secretary had come with her, had uprooted her whole life at the mere mention of a move from her boss, but it isn’t like that at all. Jess has ties to National City, ties that mean that her following Lena is more like her just going home. Point of fact, Jess had been elated to hear about Lena’s plans, and had asked, not without some shade of eager expectation, if Lena was looking to keep her on.

Regardless of the other woman’s motivations, Lena is thankful for everything that Jess has done for her. She doesn’t know very many people in National City yet, and Jess is the only one of those few connections that she hadn’t made through her numerous years of schooling. Of them all, only Jess had offered to so much as help Lena as she starts settling in, and though they aren’t friends, not quite, she can sense that Jess is helping her not because she feels it will prove beneficial to herself later on, but because she’s genuinely a kind person.

 

Further to that point, Lena thinks Jess is due for a raise, and makes a mental note to herself to bring it up later.

 

“You should get home, take the rest of the week off,” she says, and Jess protests, saying that she couldn’t possibly do such a thing. Lena laughs it off and manages to get Jess to agree to at least take tomorrow, as there won’t really be anything going on at the office either. It’s all just a lot of boring paperwork to shift through, that and meetings with builders.

The LuthorCorp office in National City is bereft of the same dark aura that seems to have permeated the Metropolis location, but there’s still some things she wants to change (and, as she tells herself, some things she needs to check out for herself). She knows that Lex had kept the details of their offices mostly to himself after Lionel’s passing, and she remembers seeing blueprints, hearing about changes that he’d implemented. It’s about time she saw for herself precisely what such changes entailed.

“Have a good night then, Miss Luthor,” says Jess, a smile on her face, and Lena sees her out with a similar smile before turning to face the relative emptiness of her new home. Already, it feels more like a home than the house she’d grown up in. More like a home than the penthouse she’d lived in when she’d called Metropolis her city. Right now, though she is still alone and unsure and still mostly unpacked, she feels more at home than she thinks she ever has.

Lena wonders what that says about her.

She sighs, though it is not a heavy release of air so much as a small sigh of contentment. “Now what to do, what to do?” She meanders over to a collection of boxes, not sure how she’d ever managed to accumulate enough _stuff_ to fill so many of them. With a small smile, she unloads pictures of herself and Lex as young children. “Oh.” She cannot lie, she misses these days. Days filled with chess and Lex and Lionel and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as worthless and unlovable as the women in the orphanage had told her she was.

The times she’d been happy as a Luthor come up in her mind’s eye. There had been many of those times. Plenty of them, really, so many that she is surprised as she sifts through the memories. Chess with Lex. Horseback riding with Lionel. The rare, quiet moments when _Lillian_ would pat her atop the head and kiss her hair, words of rare praise shared for a job well done. Tainted as they have been by recent experiences, she cannot deny that such times had existed. That she had been happy.

 

She wonders when she lost sight of that happiness.

 

“I’m ridiculous, aren’t I?”

Nobody responds. She doesn’t expect anybody to. The Timers are itching faintly, as they often do when she gets into one of her moods. She laughs, stretching her arms up towards the ceiling. It isn’t often that she feels she can relax now; she may as well make the most of it while she can, before things start getting _really_ busy.

 

Apparently, what that means for the rest of her day is curling up on the couch with a mug of tea, a chocolatey pastry of some kind that Jess had insisted she try, and a copy of CatCo. Magazine. She doesn’t know why she picks it up—it isn’t like she reads magazines with much regularity—but there’s something about this particular issue that she’s been most keen on reading.

 

An article about Supergirl, National City’s own Girl of Steel.

 

Somehow, it’s heartening to know that her new city has a protector, though she does have some reservations.

 

Curious though she may be about what motivates aliens such as Supergirl and Superman to protect humanity, she does not find that she can even bring herself to try thinking in the way that Lex and his cohorts do. She cannot bring herself to _hate_ aliens. How could she hate people who are simply trying to find a home for themselves, whether they be of her species or something else entirely? How could she, when one of her own soul mates is one such individual—an alien, most likely here on Earth not by choice, but necessity?

 

 

An orphan, in some sense…perhaps more like her than any of the humans she’s ever met.

 

 

 

 

 

The next few months are a blur. The rebranding will take time, though, at the very least, she now has the support of most of the board. She’d been able to implement many changes, and with the way things have been going, she’s now getting used to what feels like a brand-new board. Many of them _are_ new, not Lex’s people but people she’s worked with, and they view her stances on things to be refreshing.

Lena is heartened by that. She can work with that. She can make that work for her. It beats having a bunch of crusty old men breathing down her neck about all the things they don’t want her to change.

Her black-and-white Timer seems livelier than ever as it moves from one time-period to another, and she’s curious as to how her soul mate seems to be jumping all over the timeline, as it were. Are they alone, she wonders? Most likely not. Are they doing this for fun, or is there a reason behind it? She doesn’t have a clear answer for that one. She wonders if they’re respecting any sort of rules concerning time, or if they’re just jumping around willy-nilly, potentially making a mess of things…

 

With the kind of luck that she seems to be having with her soul mates, the second is _far_ more likely.

 

As always, of course, she feels that she may be being a touch unfair; until she’s met her soul mates and spoken with them, gotten to know them, learned them, she’ll never really know what they’re like. All that she has in this moment is conjecture, and intelligent as she is, Lena doesn’t believe that she’s smart enough to figure out two people she knows absolutely nothing about. Nothing save for their bond with her.

Worry still plagues her at almost all hours, the fear of losing either of her soul mates never far from her mid. It’s tamped down slightly, for some reason, as she gets the feeling that her soul mates are being taken care of by good people—she doesn’t quite know why, she just feels it—but she’d be lying to say that her anxieties about losing either of them have been put to rest.

As the day she is to meet her in-universe soul mate draws ever closer, Lena begins to put as much of a focus as she can into the soon-to-be rebranded LuthorCorp. It isn’t that she wants to impress them with the size of her buildings, or the scope of her technologies. It isn’t even that she wants them to be impressed, because she knows what the Luthor name means to the people of their world. Even the strangely friendly human and alien populations of National City are wary of her and what the Luthor name stands for; she can’t fault anyone for that.

 

All that she can do is move steadily forward, hoping beyond hope that what she’s doing will be enough—that _she_ will be enough.

 

At least, that is what she tries to do. She does her best, honestly, but then this whole _thing_ with her soul mates goes from weird (and a bit cool) to just completely _ridiculous_ (and fucking terrifying). See, Lena is used to her black-and-white Timer freaking out every so often. She hates that it seems to dim quite a bit these days, but it hasn’t disappeared, or come even close to disappearing ever since it’s return. That has to count for something, she thinks. She’s _almost_ used to the weird jumps in time as well.

What she most decidedly _isn’t_ used to is her blue-and-red Timer faltering. And it seems to do a lot of that as she works up towards revealing her rebranding project to the world. It seems to do it a _hell_ of a lot, and has been ever since…well since shortly before she decided to move her entire life over to National City.

Then her blue-and-red Timer blurs.

When it happens, she doesn’t notice at first. Her wrists itch faintly quite a bit of the time, if she’s honest, and so it doesn’t feel like there’s anything wrong. Until it does. Until she’s locking herself in her office, away from anyone who could come by and see her and ask her why she’s clutching her wrist and gritting her teeth against the icy _helplessness_ that seems to spread itself through her entire body. She doesn’t know what’s happening. Doesn’t know what it means.

 

It’s terrible, in a word.

 

The feeling subsides after a few hours, leaving her shaken and out of breath and wondering _what the fuck was that_? It’s different from how she’d felt during those _awful_ experiences from before, because she hadn’t truly lost the blue-and-red Timer. It had dimmed, had darkened a bit, had blurred, but it is still there, still on her wrist. She’d been watching it. It hadn’t ever fully disappeared, not once.

Lena files the incident away in her mind’s eye and continues with her day after making _sure_ that the Timer is exactly where she always sees it.

 

Had the experience been a one-off, Lena doesn’t think it would scare her so much. The only problem being, of course, that it happens twice more, in quick succession. The second time it’s very brief, just enough to induce a flash of panic in her. She’s in a board meeting, presenting the latest argument towards her favoured new icon for LuthorCorp—which she’ll soon be renaming, thank you very much. Just as she’s answering a question about what such a drastic change will mean for all the company’s existing subsidiaries, she feels it. It’s nothing much, just a quick one-two punch of _wait_ and _fucking hell_ , but then it’s gone. She brushes off the strange looks that the board gives her and then gets right back down to business.

She’s mildly concerned at this point, because honestly, she never, _never_ wants to go through another loss like the one that had seen her take over her family’s company on a whim. When she gets home that night, she stares at her Timers, wrists held in front of her in a strange position for a period of time that is decidedly Too Long. She doesn’t care. She needs to stop worrying about her soul mates, and though she knows she can’t be heard, she decides to give them a stern talking-to in the only way she can.

“Now the two of you had better behave. _Especially you_ ,” she says, directing her eyes towards the blue-and-red numbers. “I’d expect it from our other partner over there, but not _you_.” If numbers could look sheepish, she’s sure that they would in the moment. “I’m going to head off to bed now, because I don’t know about you two, but I have to be a functional adult during the week. Now, if there’s any _funny_ business while I’m asleep, I will be sure to add it to the list of things that we will need to discuss in _great_ detail once we’ve established our bond. Understood?” The Timers both seem to glint up at her in the low light, and she takes that for a good sign. “Wonderful.”

 

With that, she falls asleep.

 

It’s a pleasant thing, to be able to sleep through the whole night without worrying.

 

It’s a pleasant thing, to have such high hopes for her future.

 

 

Months later, as she’s kneeling on the floor of her office with her hands pressed as tightly to the protective headgear covering her ears as she can manage, that hope is the only thing that she can hold on to that’s strong enough to stop her from giving in to unconsciousness. _Come on Supergirl,_ she catches herself thinking, even as her eyes dart towards the alien detection device blueprints she’d been toying with. Supergirrl hasn’t failed National City…well, not since that weird behavioural blip that she’d undergone a few months back.

There’s no way the Girl of Steel would fail her city now.

At least, Lena hopes that she’s right.

 

 

 

Thankfully, as seems to be the trend, Supergirl proves that, as she has been with most things, Lena is right about her.

 

 

 

As Lena rises from the floor, rushing over to where she’d put Jess after the poor woman had collapsed, her mind races. Whatever had happened, Supergirl had certainly put an end to it. To be safe Lena’s keeps her protective headgear on, but she’s confident that the worst of the threat is over. She doesn’t realize it as she tends to Jess, but her blue-and-red Timer blinks dangerously in and out of existence a few times.

Later on, she’ll look back and wonder if it would have changed anything, if she’d taken a second to look down at her itching wrist. Perhaps she’d have learned of her in-universe soul mate’s identity right then and there. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to do the math. Later on, however, she’ll also point out that there had been a great number of changes in her life at that point, and so perhaps it’s for the best that things worked out the way they had.

 

 

 

Regardless, in a matter of less than a week, Lena would be meeting the first of her two soul mates, a woman who had nearly died that day saving the city that they both had come to love.

 

 

 

She just hadn’t been aware of that yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liiiiiiiive!  
> How have y'all been?  
> Good?  
> Good.


	11. Kara: Wonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kara lives her life and something wonderful happens...

Overjoyed as she is at her Daredevil's return, Kara tries her best to keep a focused mind. To be a good, no, a _perfect_  assistant even though she both cares for and is frightened of Cat Grant in equal measure. It’s decidedly strange, the way she feels about the older woman; grateful and intrigued and mildly terrified all at once. Still, the pay is much more than most people seem to think it would be, and sharpness aside—and the fact that Cat never pronounces her name right—Cat seems to…like her? It’s a truth that gives her cause to wonder as to the why of it all, but Kara doesn’t bother herself too much about it.

It’s not a bad place to be at all, really.

And now she’s also got her identity as Supergirl to worry about, all the duties and hopes and fears of a superhero with which to contend. She throws her focus into that, too. Into doing what she needs to do to keep the people safe as Supergirl. She has to protect them, the way Clark does the people of Metropolis. Has to make sure that they’re all happy and healthy and __safe.__ Everybody should feel safe.

It’s markedly more difficult than she suspects, keeping her mind off the Timer, though. She just can’t wrap her head around it, the way it had just reappeared on her wrist after being gone for a year. A whole __year.__ Her Daredevil had been dead. Stone cold, completely dead. For a year.

What kind of world is her soul mate from, that resurrection like this could be possible? She knows now, has irrefutable proof that the universe she lives in isn’t the only one—thanks to Barry and his jaunt in her Earth—and so she should be excited. This is real. This could happen any day now.

But what kind of world is her Daredevil even coming from, honestly?

And what about her other soul mate, the one with whom she shares this universe? They’re probably human, or at least have been on Earth for much longer than she's been. Is this freaking them out? Are they as wildly, confusedly giddy-yet-weirded-out as she is right now? Do they have as many questions as she does? Do they wonder about her at all?

They haven’t got much longer until they meet. little more than a year, really, and she’s excited, but frightened. Can they tell when she’s fighting crime, or would they only feel anything if she almost died? Is that possible, even? She knows it is, of course, but how many times has her life been in danger since she got to Earth? Would anything she’s experienced have negatively impacted her soul mates? The one in another universe might not even know what it could mean, but the one here would be able to tell.

Whoever they are, she gets the feeling that they’re going to be __super__  pissed when they first meet her. Or maybe they’ll only be miffed with her, but super pissed at their Daredevil? Who knows? Maybe that person will just be relieved that they’re all alive.

She falls into a state of actively __not__  worrying over it too much—or trying not to, at least. Truth be told, she’s almost successful at it, too. Takes a lot out of a person, suddenly becoming a superhero.

She’s almost completely focused on that. On what it means to be a role model and a protector. She’s almost entirely consumed by it, in a good way. In protecting her city.

 

 

 

Until impossibly weird things start happening about six months after the Greatest Thing™. Being who she is, one would think it impossible at this point, for Kara to be absolutely, completely flabbergasted by anything, but this is it. This, right here, is possibly the strangest thing she has __ever__ experienced in her life.

 

The first thing she does when she notices is to call Alex over for an emergency meeting. As soon as her sister’s hand turns the knob, Kara’s in Alex's space, holding her wrist up. “Look, Alex, __look__!” She knows it’s rude but she can’t help it, flailing her hands about like a madwoman.

Alex catches her wrist. “What’s ha—oh. Yeah, that’s…well that’s interesting.”

“Interesting? My soul mate, who __died__  in case we’re forgetting, is a __time traveller!”__ She can barely believe it. A time traveller! That’s the only explanation for why the black and white Timer is suddenly saying her Daredevil is, if her math is right, all the way in the __seventies.__ That’s crazy! And so cool.

Alex thinks it’s cool too, obviously, and from then on they spend many a night wondering what’s going on with Kara's off-universe soul mate. It’s nice, Kara thinks, being able to share this with someone. Each time she thinks it, of course, she feels just a touch more guilty than glad, because her soul mate in this universe might not have someone like Alex. Might not have __anyone__ , really, because there are people who just don’t have the kind of family that Kara had been blessed with twice, the kind of friends who have loved her through some of the hardest times of her life. Invariably, Alex cheers her up, helps her to see that one day __she__ , Kara, can be that family for her soul mates.

In the mean time, she enjoys living her life, being Supergirl, watching the numbers on the green Timer tick down steadily. She finds it funny, watching the way the black-and-white Timer jumps, and for a while, everything is good. Kara dreams about what it might be like, to finally be with her soul mates. She has hopes for the future that startle her with how…hopeful they are.

 

And then she’s fighting against Uncle Non and Myriad and praying, praying, praying that wherever her in-universe soul mate is, they aren’t here.

 

 

 

 

 

She wins, thankfully, saving the day once again…and in the rush she fails to notice how close she is to meeting the person behind her green Timer.

 

 

 

Three days of peace. She gets three days of peace before things start to get really weird. And exciting. And just downright __amazing.__

 

Okay, so. The whole Kryptonian pod thing. That’s weird. And if she’s honest, sort of exciting too, because in the brief moments before she wrenches the pod door free, she has all these guesses. Who could it be? Now, she’s not ridiculous enough to believe it’s going to be a relative—it hurts, but she’s pretty well sure that her birth parents are gone forever—but she’d been fairly well-connected as a child. Maybe she knows who it is?

The man in the pod isn’t familiar, not really, and she quiets the flicker of disappointment that threatens to ruin the background-high of beating Myriad and her uncle Non. She shouldn’t have even hoped, really, and yet the man in the pod isn’t familiar at all and so that’s…just a little confusing.

They take him to the DEO anyway, because that’s the right thing to do. Not only for the mystery-Kryptonian, but for everybody else. She’d been a scared little girl when she first arrived, and even then she’d almost done some serious damage, entirely without meaning to. What a full-grown Kryptonian might get up to, disoriented and unaware of just how differently his body works here, well…that’s not something she thinks they should test.

Alex, of course, amazing as she is, begins running all sorts of analyses on the guy almost before they can get him into the new DEO headquarters. Kara doesn’t let herself worry about him after that, fellow Kryptonian or no.

 

And that’s mostly because Cat Grant, __the__ Cat Grant, is dangling her future before her and telling her to choose, and she has no. Idea. What she wants. It’s just like before she’d moved to National City those four years ago, except this time she doesn’t have to work toward a place. She simply has to choose a place. And it sure as hell is nowhere near as easy as Cat seems to think it is.

At least she doesn’t have to worry about anything else. Of course, busy as she is, she’s forgotten that her Timer, the stunning green one, is almost at the 00/00/00 combination that everyone wants to see on their wrist. She’s too busy saving the __Venture__  to notice it, and then too busy gushing over how great it is to work with her cousin—and it is __so, so__ great—to really take notice of what’s happening. Even though it’s an imminent change. Even though her whole life is about to get even more ridiculously complicated and beautiful and __full__ than it’s ever been.

Then they come up with a name, a suspect, and her heart jumps a little. She isn’t sure why.

Lena Luthor.

She hadn’t boarded the __Venture__ , as expected, and Kal-Clark wants to know why. Obviously, of course, she does too. So she sits through the mildly amusing, yet uncomfortable thoughts that pervade her bubble of happy as Cat _ _—the Queen of all media,__ Cat Grant—marvels over her cousin as Clark. They’re not really supposed to be cousins, per se, and that makes it all the more difficult to stomach the thought of Cat having a crush on him because…well, because Kara has seen Clark in __diapers__.

Not recently, of course, Rao forbid, but still.

And then they’re headed to LuthorCorp, Kara feeling simultaneously so very, very happy to be spending time with her cousin, and yet so awkward because this is his job and she’s kind of just…tagging along. Something in her—buried deep, past the layers upon layers of Kara Danvers that she’s cultivated—rankles a bit at how their roles have flipped. He would have been the one looking up to her, had circumstances been different. She doesn’t dwell on it as they speak with a pretty, frowning woman who she only vaguely hears is Lena Luthor's receptionist-slash-assistant. If things had turned out differently, she and Alex would not have what they have now; none of the memories, the laughter, the closeness. Not that Alex has seemed all too happy lately—she'll have to check in with her sister soon.

Then. Walking through the doors in what Kara can only say is an impeccably well put-together outfit. It’s Lena, Lena Luthor herself. And she’s so stupidly, unabashedly beautiful that it makes Kara melt. Absolutely melt. She barely registers how Clark is handling the situation, following behind the two of them as they make their way to Lena's office. Despite all the white, despite the nearly surgical precision of everything in the room, it’s…lovely.

Still, she tries her best not to let down her guard. Though her heart resonates with Lena in a way that it never has with any other person before, she ignores it. Ignores the strange pulling in her gut when Lena locks their gazes together—how do human eyes even __get__ to such a gorgeous greenish-blue?

Kara ignores the twinge in her chest that sings in agreement when Lena asks if she can understand what it’s like to be a woman making a name for herself apart from her family. She does her best to not pay attention at all, until she notices the way that Lena is looking at her. Clark is doing the majority of the work and Kara isn’t even sure if she’s answered Lena’s questions properly but apparently the interview is over and they’ve been dismissed. Or at least, Clark is about to be, if the way Lena’s watching her is any indication.

“Ms. Luthor?”

“My apologies, Mr. Kent, but may I have a word with Ms. Danvers? Alone.”

Her spine tingles at that single word, and though she knows Clark is going to grill her for it later, she gives him a surreptitious nod all the same. “You don’t need to wait for me, Clark.”

That earns her an approving nod from Lena and a half-confused look from her cousin. Still, he smiles and ducks out, thanking Lena for her time in that polite Kansas-grown way of his. Lena waits until the door clicks and then she’s standing in front of Kara, and although the brunette is shorter than Kara by at least a couple inches, she’s kind of…intimidating?

Not because she’s a Luthor, because honestly Kara should know better than to judge someone for their family’s mistakes. It’s something else. There’s just something about her eyes. They’re blue, but actually mostly green…a lovely colour really. Striking. Famili—oh Rao. __Green.__  Oh Rao, is this real?

One way to know for sure.

Her hands shake as she reaches for her sleeve, and then Lena touches her arm, stopping her. Tentatively. Gently, like she’s scared Kara is going to break (if only she knew) or like she can’t believe Kara is here. From the look in her eyes it seems to be both.

“Wait.”

“Ms. Luthor?”

“Lena, please Ms. Danvers.”

“Of course, but it’s just Kara.” Just Kara. Has she ever been just Kara? To anybody?

Lena’s shy smile is so, so different from the ones she’d given Clark, so…natural. She isn’t hiding behind anything, but she’s still just a little guarded. Just a little. Rao, Kara can’t stop looking at the other woman’s face. Her eyes drop to the ground once she realizes she’s staring, only to be drawn up towards the spot where she and Lena are connected by Lena’s hand on her sleeve. The Timer is blue and red and bold, and she knows, it has to be her.

That’s her, the mark of her, on Lena's skin. She’s Lena’s soul mate—one of them, anyway. She can see a black and white Timer on Lena’s other wrist.

“I can’t believe it. It’s __you.__  Kara, I…”

And there’s such reverence in the way Lena says her name that she almost says the Binding words, except she doesn’t know if it would work since they’re technically not…complete. Not yet. Instead, her mind scrambles to say something, anything, to show Lena she’s completely in the moment.

“Golly, you’re certainly very pretty.”

The amused lift of Lena's eyebrow makes her want to smack herself. “Golly?”

“Beautiful women make me kinda nervous!” __Wow Kara.__ Way to go. Way to convince your soul mate that you’re totally smooth and not at all a huge dork.

Lena is suddenly close, very close, her hand trailing down to the hem of Kara's sleeve. “May I?” Kara can only nod, shivering just a little as Lena’s hand moves against the fabric, pulling it up.  It’s the wrong wrist, the black and white Timer winking up at them, cheeky as ever. Daredevil is somewhere in…what would have been the Salem Witch Trials?

“At least our little time traveller seems to be taking better care,” Lena chuckles. The dark tinge in her voice is all Kara needs to feel how deeply Lena had suffered their shared loss, and she can’t help it. She’s a little angry at whoever might have brought about their other partner's death.

“So…” says Lena, tugging gently on Kara's other sleeve. “This must be me.”

“It’s you.” Kara isn’t sure if she’s breathing. Lena doesn’t seem to be either. “Lena, it’s __you.__ ”

Lena’s fingers ghost over the green Timer and Kara swears she can see it ripple, responding to the other woman’s touch. “You’re really here.” Kara's heart breaks at the disbelief in the other woman’s voice.

What’s happened to Lena, all these years? How much has Kara missed, in all these years of never knowing each other, but being bound together all the same? “I’m here. Lena, I’m here. I’m your soul mate.”

“Yes, you are,” says Lena, and Kara has to smile at the steel under the watery wavering of Lena’s voice. Her cheeks are wet too. She doesn’t care about that, about anything in this moment outside of Lena Luthor. “Who would have thought? Lex Luthor's little sister and Supergirl herself, bonded as we are.”

She knows she should be more startled, perhaps a bit more alarmed, but she isn’t. Somehow it makes sense that Lena knows. “How did you know?”

Lena smiles again. They’re still sort of holding hands, sort of just fiddling with the Timers on each other’s wrists. “I had a feeling when you walked in with Clark Kent.” The way her lips curve around the name make Kara all too aware that Lena probably knows a great deal more secret identities than just Kara’s alone. She’s brilliant though, so it makes sense.

“But did you know for sure?”

“I mean…I felt it? It all makes quite a bit of sense when you think about it.” Kara’s pretty sure she means that retrospectively but Lena has the look of someone who thinks a great deal on a great many things.

“Does it?”

“There’s the colour scheme, for starters. The timing of our meeting. The fact that those glasses don’t hide quite as much as most people are willing to let them.” Lena’s smile is positively breathtaking as she says it. “You’re a dead ringer for the Girl of Steel behind those adorable frames.”

She laughs at that. It’s always been a gamble, that regardless of how adorably peppy she plays her life as Kara Danvers out to be, people will piece it together. That they’ll figure her out. She should have known somebody as intelligent as Lena would have come to the conclusion so shortly after meeting her.

Lena guides her over to the couch, smiling all the while, and Kara can’t help what her face must be doing. Probably a vey goofy smile. Something stupidly open and obvious because she can’t help it. She’s just so __excited__.

This is real.

Soul mates exist.

Hers—one of hers—is right there, across from her, fiddling with her fingers as if she’s not sure she should keep on touching Kara. Kara takes one of Lena’s hands in hers and gives it a squeeze.

“I’m so glad I found you.”

Lena shivers. She’s not sure why, but she moves a little closer to the dark-haired woman anyway. Solidarity. Support. “Even though I’m just…even though I’m a Luthor?”

Kara smiles. “You said it yourself. You’re trying to make a name for yourself outside your family. Lena, you’re much more than just a Luthor.”

Lena squeezes her hand in return. “I’m just so...I’m so, so happy to have found you, Kara. You couldn’t possibly imagine…” Kara isn’t sure what Lena isn’t saying, but they have time to talk. The rest of their lives to figure out what all their little silences mean. For now, she’s happy just to hold Lena’s hand, to tell her, over and over, how happy this moment has made her.

They smile at each other for ages, trading those same little assurances. Asking personal questions. Light ones, at first, no need to rush headlong into the heavy things. It’s beautiful, and so engrossing that Kara is glad she’d told Clark to go ahead. As it is she’s not sure how she’s going to leave Lena’s side.

 

Still, there’s just something a little…

Off.

 

Kara wonders if Lena can feel it too. How they’re complete, but not quite. Someone is missing.

Their little time traveller, Lena had said. How apt. Now, if only their Daredevil could be a universe-jumper too, then they’d all be together. She has Lena now though. It’s amazing. Absolutely __amazing.__ She can feel it already, and she knows what the feeling is even though it’s so early in their relationship and they haven’t even completed the Binding.

Some people might try to fight it, to push against the Timers and the bonds they represent, but not Kara. She hadn’t even thought such a thing could be __possible__ , but Lena’s sitting right there, beautiful and brilliant and…Kara's. How could Kara not fall in love with the woman? Lena being a Luthor doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. Not when Lena’s eyes are filled with such love already, not when Kara's heart is fluttering so wildly against her chest. She’s falling in love and she barely knows Lena. Yet.

“Would you…do you want to join me for dinner tonight, Kara? Is that too forward?”

“Of course it isn’t! I’d love to,” she says, honestly, wholeheartedly. Perhaps she’s too eager, but Kara doesn’t care.

 

 

Her reward is the wonder written all over Lena; in the green of her eyes and the quirk of her lips and the way her hand squeezes Kara's again and again. Her soul mate.

 

 

How wonderful.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...AHAHAHA...hi.
> 
> Um so...you know by now that my updates will most likely not be as prompt as I wish I could make them. But hey...they're still showing up so that's good, right? Next chapter is gonna be Sara. Not sure if they're all meeting up yet, I don't think they will, but we'll see.
> 
> Here's where I'm going to start breaking from canon cuz...fuck canon.
> 
> Follow me [ on Tumblr ](http://lazywritergirl.tumblr.com) if you feel so inclined. My blog, much like my life, is sort of a shitstorm but hey. Could be fun?


	12. Sara: Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sara is _almost_ too busy to give the numbers on her wrist much thought...

She ends up in Tibet. She’s not sure _how_  she ends up in Tibet, but she does, and it’s fucking cold up on the mountain but she doesn’t care. She’s spent so much time wandering, wondering, questioning, trying to find herself again. Maybe that’s how she’s ended up in Tibet; so distracted by all the questions in her head that her body has just gone and taken itself as far away from Starling as it dares.

__Concentrate, Sara._ _

But on what? So far, she’s come out from the other side—the resurrected dead girl jokes are funny in her head—and the playfulness she’d once used as a shield has returned.

At least the Lazarus Pit hasn’t stolen her sense of humour along with bits and pieces of her soul. Or maybe she’s just faking it? She doubts it—her time on the island and in the League has taught her never to offer herself the perfidy of self-doubt.

Still, Sara’s not...sure anymore. Not as decisive in so many things, as she had been before dying. It’s been months since she came alive, half a year, just about, but she’s still...restless. Uncertain about almost everything. The only constants in her life now are the numbers on her wrists. Those are still there, still doing the weird loops that they’ve always done.

The superscripted 38s on them drive her __nuts__ almost as much as the numbers themselves, because sure she can understand that the numbers are basically little timers, but __why__?

She hasn’t really studied them in a while, and not once since she was brought back to life. Sitting in a Tibetan bar drinking something foul but mostly serviceable—because of how drunk it seems like it’ll get her after a few more—she does. They’re both pretty to look at, at the very least.

Not like the drab browns and oranges and greys she’s been surrounded by for the last few hours. What do they mean, exactly? And do they have anything to do with that weird bout of pain she’d experienced a couple months back? She’d been fighting some would-be rapists in a back alley somewhere, and a burst of numbness across her whole body had nearly cost her an arm.

They couldn’t be related to that, right?

Felicity had hinted at something to her, before she’d left. Something about a multiverse and Barry and different Earths and soul mates. Honestly, she doesn’t know what that has to do with __her,__ but Felicity seems to think it’s an answer, or at least the gateway to an answer. Sara’s not even going to think about the implications, though, at least not now while her head is starting to buzz from—a girl’s protests smack her out of dwelling in that buzz.

She tells the large man bothering the serving girl to let go, but he doesn’t comply, of course, so Sara does the rational thing. Never a question of doing the rational thing when there’s a girl in danger.

 

It might get her into trouble one day, this rash nature of hers, but she doubts that will be the case today.

 

Without another word Sara stands, whips the shot glass in her hand across the bar, and rushes towards the group of burly, fur-covered me . Her blood roars uncomfortably in her ears, and she’s perhaps more violent than she should be, all things considered.

It doesn’t last long at all, as far as fights go, and all in all she’s rather disappointed. That feeling gives way to raw surprise when a British man in a duster offers to sit with her, saying he’s come a long way to meet her. The last thing she registers before passing out is the look in his eyes and the flash of something very, very bright.

 

 

***

 

 

Time travel, huh?

Were she anybody else, Sara doesn’t think she’d believe it, but as it stands, she’s pretty sure that this Rip Hunter guy isn’t crazy, despite all appearances. He seems genuine enough, genuinely concerned at the very least. Concerned for a future that she’ll technically never have to deal with, but hey. If she can prevent it, she will. Anything’s better than what she’s been up to for the last few months.

She spars with Laurel for the first time in __ever__ , immensely impressed with her sister though of course she still comes out on top. There’s still a goodness, a restraint in Laurel that she’s lost somewhere. An unwillingness to kill of which Sara has long since been stripped.

In a way, she’s glad that Nyssa had been the one to train her sister, though ideally Laurel would never have been caught up in Ollie’s vigilante business at all. Apparently the two of them keep in touch, at least as much as one might expect from a pair of women with their particular…schedules. At least, for Laurel, having the backing of the Heir to the Demon can only have been a good thing. Can only __be__ a good thing.

She questions how such a thing could have even happened, but no matter.

They finish their match and Laurel tells her that she should go, that she should get on board the possibly-crazy future-born Rip Hunter's ship and save the world. “Be a hero in the light,” Laurel tells her, and Sara has to admit the new suit is…nice. Looks good. Will most likely move well, too.

Sara tells her sister she loves her and takes the suit, not sure if she’s comfortable with the itch in her blood as she thinks about fighting in it. The hunger to take, the bloodlust that she’s described to Laurel, is relentless. Even more so than she lets her sister know. But Sara doesn’t falter. For now, at least, she has a purpose.

For the first time in ages, there’s little question about where she should go next.

Before she goes, however, she makes one last stop. Felicity has been asking after her, and while she can’t quite face Ollie or Thea right now, she owes at least that much to Felicity. She’d been able to spend a night with Diggle and Lyla and the adorable little girl they’d named in her memory, so really, saying a personal goodbye to Felicity is the least she could do.

The first thing out of the adorable blonde's mouth is “So now on top of being a badass assassin with scientific abilities and knowledge of field medicine you get to add __time traveller__  to your resume? That’s so cool!”

Sara laughs at that, watching the door in case Ollie decides to show up, though she’s not one hundred percent sure what his relationship with Felicity looks like right now. “You guys gonna be okay here without me?” She doesn’t know why she asks, because they’ve done well without her and they’re going to be just fine, she knows, but...”Shouldn’t have asked, sorry, that was stupid.”

“Don’t think like that,” Felicity says, and then Sara has her arms full of teary genius-hacker. “You’re always going to be important to the team, Sara, even if you’re going off to save the future in a timeship. Which, I know I’ve said it before, but it’s just. It’s so cool. Sorry. I mean, I’ll miss you!”

“I’ll miss you, too. Thanks Fliss,” Sara says, squeezing the other woman. “You make sure everyone knows who's boss, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Felicity smiles at her, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “While you’re gone, do you want me to look into the multiverse? See if I can figure out what’s up with the numbers on your wrist, for real?”

“I didn’t think that was your area of expertise,” she replies, only half-joking because she’s not quite sure just what Felicity can and can’t do. Seems like every time they see each other Felicity has just completed another level in amazing.

The other blonde shrugs and laughs. “I’ve got Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco to help me; we’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks Fliss,” Sara says again, because it’s all she can think to say. “I really will miss you, you lovable nerd.” Where she’s going, she figures the numbers on her wrists are going to be the last things on her mind for a good long while.

 

 

 

She should have made a bet about it, because the second her foot hits the Waverider's metal steps, she’s got __so__  much else to think about than the anomalies that are her numbers.

 

Like the crew Rip Hunter has assembled, for starters.

 

They're as motley an assortment as any Sara's ever seen, but she thinks, somehow, that they’re bound to make a good team. Maybe it’s Ray’s optimism shining through, the same unflinching hope that she'd come to love from Felicity, or maybe it’s something else. She doesn’t know, really, but there’s something there. Some sort of potential. Maybe she’s just being optimistic too, but she keeps it to herself.

Then almost immediately thinks she might be wrong when Rip tells her and the hot and cold twins that they’re to stay aboard because he doesn’t need their skillsets. Why bring them along, then? And is he saying that killing people is her only skill?

__Rude__.

Sara laughs it off, as she’s taken to doing for so many other things in her life post-Lazarus Pit. Instead of getting angry and questioning what she’s gone and gotten herself involved in, she puts on her new suit. Goes to the bar. Gets into a fight. It quells the rushing, roaring sound in her ears that takes over whenever she’s gone too long without spilling a little blood.

Should she be concerned about that?

__Probably__.

The hunger running through her veins is so, so hard to fight, but she does, because that is what she has always done. She does her best to fight it back, back, and then she’s fighting again except this time it’s more like she’s just running back to the Waverider, away from the guy with the fancy gun and the—as Snart had put it—Boba Fett get-up.

For a minute, she feels…sort of normal?

 

 

 

Then everything goes wrong. Savage kills Carter, and Kendra goes into shock, and then Sara lets go of her control just a little, just a little, allowing the rush of violence to take over her as they come face to face with Savage and his creepy blood-drinker cult. It isn’t enough to do things right—only Kendra can do that, now—but Rip takes out his revenge on Savage, even though he shouldn’t. Sara can’t judge him for that.

 

Then Russia happens, and Sara has a dilemma in the form of Rip’s order to kill Stein should it become impossible to retrieve him. She doesn’t have anything close to a confidante on the ship as it is, and as she prepares for the mission, Sara is ashamed. Ashamed that she doesn’t so much as flinch when Rip tells her what she needs to do, because she’d expected something like that; she’d done this sort of thing before, too, with the League, under orders from Ra's.

Ashamed because she lines up the shot without anything even vaguely resembling hesitation in the gesture, even though she’s resolved not to shoot unless she has absolutely no choice.

Ashamed because it’s __Captain Cold__  of all people who talks her down from what she’s sure would have been a big mistake, a kill worth regretting for the rest of her damn life.

 

It’s strange, but as the Waverider malfunctions and she struggles to keep conscious, she’s glad that she doesn’t have a soul mate. Surely there’s no one in the world who could possibly deserve somebody so fucked up for a partner? What kind of poor soul would they have to be, to be tied to her like that?

 

 

***

 

 

Despite the constant annoyance of those thoughts, Sara grows as she and the others travel from time to time, and she’s not sure where or when it happens, but she finally feels a little better. Just a touch better, because it’s hard to feel normal when she’s got this crazy bloodlust thing constantly baiting her, but still. Despite all the hardships, she’s coming to love this team. To feel like a part of something in a way that she hasn’t felt in so long.

For once, it’s like she doesn’t have to question if she belongs. Nobody else has numbers like hers—they’re Dreamers, all—but that is of little consequence. Nobody questions the numbers either, though maybe __that__  is more because she still hides them under wristbands and sleeves and gloves whenever she remembers to.

She knows that it won’t last forever, but for now, the numbers are truly just hers.

 

 

 

It happens when they’re in the Wild West. Somebody else notices the numbers blinking down across her wrists. And __actually__  notices, doesn’t just see them and then keep their thoughts to themselves.

Thankfully it’s Kendra, probably the only person on the Waverider crew with whom Sara feels comfortable talking about soul mates. Maybe it’s because Kendra, though she eventually came to remember her love for Carter, had rebelled against the idea for so long. Maybe it’s because even now, Kendra is doing her best to be happy with Ray despite it being clear that they aren’t in each other’s Dreams. Maybe it’s just because she misses having a close friendship with another woman, for once.

“You don’t Dream?” Kendra’s voice is gentle, quiet. Thoughtful. Sara likes that, how the other woman can go from psycho-hawk-goddess to really nice human being.

“Never have,” she says as they allow their horses to meander along the path back from the older Kendra's shack. “All I’ve ever had has been these numbers.” She doesn’t throw in any lines about how much strife she’s gone through because of this; judging from Kendra’s soft expression, she doesn’t have to.

They ride on, neither of them all too concerned with getting back right away. “They’re pretty,” Kendra says. It’s a throwaway comment, something Sara can build on or ignore.

She builds on it. “That was always the consolation in the back of my mind, you know?” She grips her horse with her knees, stretching her arms with marked thoroughness, to roll the worst of the stiffness out of her shoulders. “And my parents seemed to think  that these numbers meant something, though neither of them ever told me what their thoughts were.”

“Do you want to know if there’s really something to them?”

“I…” How does she even explain the relationship she has with these numbers? “Felicity thinks she can figure out what they mean, says it’s something about the multiverse or something like that.”

Kendra nods. She’s spent enough time with Team Flash to understand what the implication is. “If it turns out you have soul mates on another version of Earth, what will you do?”

She shrugs. It’s one of the many things she’s asked herself through the long, long days and nights. “I dunno, really. I mean, I’ve sort of gotten used to the idea that I don’t have a soul mate, and suddenly there’s a chance I have two?” Sara shrugs off the look Kendra is giving her and adds, “I’m not sure I’d want to meet them, even if this were all true. Wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

She doesn’t answer the question, and they finish the ride back in silence. How can she explain that she’s not worth the love of one person, let alone two? How can she dump all of that on Kendra? Especially after the conversation they’ve just had with the past version of her friend? That would be cruel to both of them, and Sara will not broach that topic again if she can help it.

Luckily, Kendra knows better than to push. And Sara? She isn’t quite sure why she’d said something like that in the first place. It’s __true__ , but still.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Life happens so fast after that that she has only the vaguest impressions of how the world is rushing past her.

 

Marooned in the 50s, returning to the League and finally getting closure.

 

Her past self. Ill-advised bangs and a penchant for bad boys.

 

The Pilgrim, defeated by a young Rip Hunter.

 

Cassandra Savage, and Carter reincarnated into an enemy.

 

Snart. Leonard. A hero in the end, despite his beginnings.

 

Sara stays awake in the nights following his sacrifice. In her mind she sees the exact moment when she kisses him and runs and she doesn’t know why loss feels so cold. Why it cuts through her heart like she can barely believe when she hadn’t loved him. Not like that.

 

 

So much of it is a blur after that.

 

 

Then, after tears and struggles and a pretty good fight, they win, except it’s still a loss because Rip still loses his family, and Leonard is dead, and Sara doesn’t quite know what other reason she has for being on this team when the one thing Rip brought them here for is the one thing they failed in so completely.

And then to top it all, they come home to 2016 except it’s months later than it should be, __months__ , and Laurel is dead.

Laurel.

Her sister.

Her father can barely keep his tears at bay and Sara is a mess as she huddles in his arms, a child again. Laurel, who’d been the best sister, the only sister Sara could have or would have asked for despite all their differences. Laurel is dead. And she could have __done__ something if only she’d been here.

“Don’t, Sara,” says her father, and she’s surprised at how childlike being near him makes her feel. She hasn’t been a child in ages. “Don’t blame yourself.”

She isn’t sure how to answer that. She’s too sad, too guilty, too __angry.__  Instead she spends what feels like hours holed up with her dad. When she leaves him she promises to take care of herself, but she barely cares anymore. What reason does she have now?

Her wrists throb as she walks, hardly noticeable, aggrieved as she is. She can barely make out where she’s headed, wandering through Star City alone. Her feet tread lightly along the darkened streets until she finds herself at Felicity’s door. Her friend is dishevelled in the “it’s-three-in-the-morning-who-are-you” kind of way, but as soon as her eyes land on Sara she’s wide awake.

“Oh my god, Sara!” Excitement turns into sniffles and sobs as she takes in Sara's face. “Oh my god, Sara, I’m so sorry.”

She has to half-carry Felicity into her apartment before she breaks down too, and then she spends another hour crying in someone else’s arms. “I miss her, Felicity. I miss her so much.”

“I miss her too,” Felicity says, and they’re both teary messes. Sara’s not sure when she’d last cried so much. It’s been ages, at this point, and if she’s honest with herself, then it’s all rather embarrassing. She holds on to Felicity anyway as Felicity holds on to her, and eventually they settle down.

One look from the hacker and Sara knows Laurel won’t be brought up anymore; it’s for the best.

Something in Felicity’s head must click as she and Sara sit there staring at each other, and then suddenly she’s sitting up. “Oh!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to tell you!” Felicity’s ponytail nearly whacks her in the face as the other blonde turns, reaching for something behind her that she can’t quite grab. “Sara, Barry and Cisco figured it out! At least, they think they’ve figured it out. You never know with them, what with the crazy metahuman stuff that happens over in Central like, every week, because obviously—

“Fliss?” It feels disrespectful to Laurel's memory to be smiling so soon after getting the news, but she can’t help it. “Fliss, you’re adorable, but __what__  did Barry and Cisco figure out?”

Felicity turns back to Sara, nearly smacking her in the face with her ponytail again. “They know which Earth your soul mates are on!”

“…what?”

Sara doesn’t know if she can listen to this—there's no __way__ , right?—but Felicity looks so excited. She can’t ruin that. Doesn’t stop her from voicing the suspicion she’s been toying with ever since the multiverse became a factor in all of this. “Lemme guess... there’s an Earth 38 somewhere in the big wide multiverse?”

“How did you—” Sara holds up her wrists, tilting them so that Felicity has a clear view of all the numbers. “Oh. Yeah. Right.” Felicity’s giggling approaches borderline embarrassing before she snaps herself out of it. “Right, but! They __confirmed__ it!”

“How?”

“Barry has a friend living on that Earth, apparently, and she confirmed that that’s how they find soul mates there. Isn’t that __nuts__?”

Sara nods and sort of…blanks out of the conversation. So many questions that even the answers only serve to make more. She’d be lying to herself to say she wasn’t insanely curious now, but she has things to do. A purpose. She leaves Felicity’s apartment a few hours later and finds herself on Rip Hunter’s ship once again.

 

 

 

And then things get weird.

 

 

Then weirder.

 

 

Like…she goes from rolling-around with-the-Queen-of-France level weird to being-time-marooned-in-the-Salem Witch-Trials level weird. Sara rolls with it, as she’s learned to do. With humour and a wandering eye and a way with the young men and women of the charming little village she finds.

 

 

She knows she’s __sort of__  in trouble when she gets put on trial, but she’s not too concerned about anything right now.

Losing her sister had taught her a great many lessons she’d never wanted to learn, but above all, Sara knows, she has to keep moving. Look forward, not back. Even the numbers on her wrist appear brighter, she thinks as Ray and a handsome guy with nice hair show up to help her.

 

Don’t get bogged down in questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surpriiiiiiise!

**Author's Note:**

> Just going to...um...leave that there...Anyway, I do apologize if spaces between updates are crazy-long, but I will try to get things up as quickly as possible. Being an adult has hit me hard, but I'm never going to stop writing! Hit me up [ on Tumblr](https://lazywritergirl.tumblr.com) if you'd like, I'm always down to chat with people/answer questions/whatever. Mkay, bye!


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